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SEMI-CENTENNIAL 
ANNIVERSARY BOOK 



The University of Nebraska 



1869-1919 




BY TH 



ITY 





CHANCELLOR SAMUEL AVERY 

Absent from the University, 1918. Major in Chemical Warfare 

Service, U. S. A. 



SEMI-CENTENNIAL 
ANNIVERSARY BOOK 



The University of Nebraska 



1869-1919 




BY THE UNIVERSITY 

LINCOLN 

1919 



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PREFATORY NOTE 

Nineteen hundred and nineteen is the semi-centennial 
anniversary of the founding of the University of Nebraska. 
It is therefore appropriate that some record be published, 
sketching the history of the institution in the first fifty 
years of its existence. The articles contained in this anni- 
versary book are the product of no long period of prepara- 
tion. Most of them were written within a few weeks after 
the book was planned. Doubtless they omit much that 
might well have been included, and here and there they may 
exhibit inaccuracies; and there is probably overlapping of 
material, as always when a work is the product of collabora- 
tion. It was not possible in the time available to secure all 
the contributions wished or to secure contributions from 
all the persons approached; and it is to make good the 
defect thereby occasioned that certain articles are supplied 
by the editor. Nevertheless, for the most part, the sketches 
come from the pens of those best fitted to write them ; and 
it is hoped that the book in some fair measure reflects the 
growth of the University since its foundation half a cen- 
tury ago. 



CONTENTS 

Charter-Day Poem, (Quarter-Centennial Anniversary) 
Herbert Bates 

Historical Sketches of the University of Nebraska : 

The Background \ LomsE pouND 

The Founding of the University J 

Admission and Curricula L. A. Sherman 

Early Faculty and Equipment George E. Howard 

Development of Schools and Colleges 

Howard W. Caldwell 

Buildings and Grounds Edna D. Bullock 

Undergraduate Life Will Owen Jones 

The Library Nellie J. Compton 

The Military Department Guernsey Jones 

Organizations Louise Pound 

The Alumni Annis S. Chaikin 

The University and the Community 

Hattie P. Williams 

The Regents Albert Watkins 

Publications Olivia Pound 

Athletics GUY E. REED 

The University and the War Annis S. Chaikin 

The University Today ...Sherlock B. Gass 

The Future H. B. Alexander 

Founders' Hymn L. A. Sherman 

Personal Sketches: 

Chancellor A. R. Benton Henry H. Wilson 

Chancellor E. B. Fairfield Clement Chase 

Chancellor J. Irving Manatt Grove E. Barber 

Chancellor James Hulme Canfield W. F. Dann 

Chancellor E. Benjamin Andrews....EDGAR L. Hinman 

Dean A. H. Edgren Laurence Fossler 

Dean C. E. Bessey ...Raymond J. Pool 

Poem: Academe H. B. A. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Chancellor Samuel Avery Frontispiece 

Chancellor J. Irving Manatt, facing page 123 

Chancellor J. H. Canfield 127 

Chancellor E. B. Andrews 131 

Dean A. H. Edgren 135 

Dean Charles E. Bessey 139 



CHARTER-DAY POEM 



QUARTER-CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY 

University of Nebraska 

The hunter shook from his brown pipe the spark 

That flashed into the dark 

Of the knotted grass-roots, and grew strong and sprang 

Into crackling flame, and it heard the wind that sang 

Its keen dry wail o'er the prairies, and strengthened and 

grew 
Till it flared to a league-long flame, and the scared birds 

flew, 
Smoke-blinded before it, and the blundering buffalo fled, 
And the coyote quacked in his covert, and the Indian said : 
"Tonight the God of the fire has raised his head !" 

From the fire of ancient worlds a little spark, chance- 
shaken, 
Fell on our alien plains, and spread alone, 
And strengthened till it shone 
World-wide; and nations said: When did it waken? 
We saw not its birth, but today we see afar, 
A flame that darkens the low sunset star, 
And drives the huddled night 
Cowering before the lances of its light. 

For a voice cried in the ear 

Of the West : Awake, for the future calls thee ! Hear, 

Child of the plain, today your limbs are strong, 

Your eyes are radiant! Wake, for you sleep too long! 

Wake, for the east hills quicken into day, 

And the gray wind of morning calls to song ! 

Wake, for within your heart there glows 

The prompting of the new-born soul, 
Strenuous and tireless, quickening as it knows, 

Far off, the destined goal ! 



8 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

The golden sunflowers, myriad-blossoming, blaze, 

From hill to golden hill ; 
And melt at last into the golden haze 

Of the great distance. All the land is still 
With solitude, and only the quick bird 
Chirps in the grass ; no other sound is heard 
To praise God's golden gift. 
The white clouds sail and sift 
The mottled moonlight over the wide land, 
The slow streams flow; the narrow forests stand 
Huddled and timorous for loneliness. 
Has God not given gifts enough to bless 
Our singers from their silence? Has our ear 
Grown all too dull to hear 
The still, sweet voice of Nature's tenderness ? 
Has she no whisper to awake 
The soul that dreams, the song that sleeps, 
Until its thrilling chords shall shake 

To the gray hearts of older lands, 
To where the ocean's iron deeps 

Complain upon their endless sands? 

To love, to know, to sing, — these three 
Are God's most precious gifts to men, 

To know what has been, and to see 

The ripening of what shall be, 
Far off beyond the present's ken. 

To read life's book, and understand ; 
To tell the treasury of stars, 
And through Death's unrelenting bars 

To spy the bounds of spirit-land. 

To love, to know life fair, to see 
Earth beautiful, till each gray tree 
Shall tell its message, each star shine 
Some consolation, and the line 
Of the last hills shall speak of peace ; 
Till war and hate and envy cease, 
And over all the smiling land shall chime 
The petalled joy-bells of God's blossoming time. 



CHARTER-DA Y POEM 9 

To sing, to tell it all, 
As the glad birds that call 
The green spring up the land, till each 
With happier heart shall learn and teach 
Such new accord of life as sings attune 
Through the dense leaves of June. 

To know, to love, to sing — and then, 
To spread the gathered wealth abroad 
To every dwelling-place of men, 
As, with the ancient dragon-hoard, 
Siegfried, the slayer, southward rode 
With the red serpent gold that glowed, 
All glorious, at his saddle-bow. 

Ride on, conqueror, with thy spoil 

Of error and thy gifts of might! 
Ride on, that every heart may know 

The sudden sun of wisdom's light, 
That through the loneliest prairie ways, 

Where the least sod-built shanty stands, 

Or where the city's million hands 
Toil grimy through the grudging days, 
The blessing of thy gifts may go, 
That our new land may rise and know, 
As the old peoples of the past, 
The joys that do not pale, the hopes that last 
Against the hour of death, and make of life 
More than a barren strife, 
And of life's end no mere forgetf ulness. 
So shall thy mission be to bless, 
To raise, to brighten, and to lead us on 
Till the last fight is won, 
The utmost end accomplished, and we see 
Far up above us, white and marvellous, 
The peaks long-sought, and hear acclaiming us 
The voices of old victors gloriously 
Triumphing up the slopes of victory. 

Herbert Bates. 
February 15, 1894. 



HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



THE BACKGROUND 

From the first, the pioneer plainsmen of Nebraska were 
not content to be absorbed only in the activities of the pres- 
ent. They were not only adventurers and workers; they 
were dreamers. They fixed their eyes upon the future; 
and they planned with a constructive capacity which in 
these days — when Indian questions are no more, when ter- 
ritorial and statehood aspirations have so long been 
realized, when innumerable cities have replaced the cabins 
and dugouts of earlier generations — we should hold in 
grateful memory. For the most part, the minds and 
energies of the contemporary generation are occupied with 
the manifold interests of the present. It is rare that we 
pause to give thought to the pioneers who laid so strongly 
and so surely the foundations of our life today, and made 
possible its successes. Only an occasional chronicler of 
early institutions looks back over their struggles, and 
realizes, with reverent attention, the ideals and efforts of 
generations long in their graves. 

When we think at all of those who obeyed the dictum 
"Go West" and made their pioneer homes in the region 
which was to be the territory and afterwards the state of 
Nebraska, we picture them as men passing their lives in 
isolated districts, far from the centers of population, and 
preoccupied with the tireless work attendant upon the 
breaking in of a new country. We picture them as engaged 
in useful labors but as leading humble and routine lives, en- 
grossed in pioneer tasks. We are likely to forget that they 
were a special breed of men, especially rich in ambitions and 
ideals, — richer in these, it may well be, than many of us who 
are their descendants. Like the colonists of New England, 
they had much to leave behind when they made their way 
to new regions and established new homes; but they were 

11 



12 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

of the fiber to hold to their purpose. They surrendered 
many things when they came to these plains. Ties of kin- 
ship, of friendship, and endearing associations bound them 
to older localities. It is only men of strong individuality 
who break such bonds, and face undaunted the self-denials 
and privations of frontier life. New regions are not sought 
by the weak or the timid or the dependent, but by those of 
stern make — men of unusual self-reliance, endowed with 
enthusiasm and with zealous ambition. 

For those who read the stirring narrative of life in Ne- 
braska in the early days, an outstanding feature is the wish, 
so soon denning itself, to care for the mental as well as the 
material welfare of its citizens — the aspiration to provide 
as early as possible for their higher education. This is 
apparent in the expression of pioneer ideals in speeches 
and in newspapers and in a review of the bills formulated 
by early legislatures. The region had hardly been pene- 
trated and institutions of civilization had hardly been estab- 
lished when the wish to build for the future found definite 
voice, and the foundations of a system of higher educa- 
tion were laid on broad and liberal lines. 

To particularize, the decade which saw the inception and 
establishment of the State University was the decade of 
the 1860's, when Nebraska had but just reached statehood, 
for Nebraska became a state only in 1867. In the preceding 
decade the route of the Overland Mail service had passed 
through the Nebraska prairies, and that interesting and pic- 
turesque mode of transportation, the Pony Express, from 
St. Joseph to Sacramento, routed through Kearney, was 
given up only in 1861. There was much freighting by 
oxen in the 1860 , s, and in the next decades, and many im- 
migrants were still coming in "prairie schooners," or pass- 
ing through to regions farther west. The only parts of 
the state at all well settled were the southeastern and the 
eastern, and some of the chief centers of population were 
Omaha, Nebraska City, Plattsmouth, Falls City, and 
Brownville. The total population of the state could hardly 
have outnumbered 100,000. There were still many thou- 
sands of Indians on Nebraska reservations, Sioux, Winne- 



THE BACKGROUND 13 

bago, Omaha, Otoe, Missouri, and Sacs and Foxes. The 
government had assumed control of them sometime before, 
for the protection of the immigrants. As for national 
affairs, at the close of the decade Andrew Johnson was in 
the president's chair, to be succeeded by General Grant. 

The University was established in the fifteenth year 
after the admission of Nebraska to territorial government, 
in the second year after its admission to statehood, four 
years after the close of the Civil War and the assassination 
of President Lincoln, and seven years before the centen- 
nial of the foundation of the republic of the United States. 
The city of Lincoln, at which the University was located, 
had been fixed upon as the state capital hardly two 
years before. It had few more than a thousand inhabitants, 
no water except well water, few or no sidewalks; a gas 
plant was not yet begun, and the campus where the univer- 
sity building was to be built was raw prairie, far out of 
town. Legislatures had hardly begun to meet at Lincoln, 
as state legislatures, when the first bills for the establish- 
ment of a normal school and for a university were passed. 
Already in the territorial period many bills of this nature 
had been introduced but owing to the outbreak of the Civil 
War they had not borne fruit in tangible results. 

It is good to see in retrospect early conditions, for the 
state and for the city of Lincoln, if we are to realize the 
expansions of fifty years. In the first moment of its self- 
consciousness, the state planned for its sons and daughters 
an institution which, within a half-century, more than 
realizes the dreams of the pioneers who founded it, and is 
a monument to their courage and prevision. 

Louise Pound. 



14 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



THE FOUNDING OF THE UNIVERSITY 

The University of Nebraska was chartered by act of 
the Nebraska legislature in 1869. The bill providing for 
its charter, known as S. F. No. 86, "an act to establish 
the University of Nebraska," was introduced into the sen- 
ate on February 11, by E. E. Cunningham of Richardson 
County. It was referred back, on the day of its introduc- 
tion, to the committee on education, the chairman of which 
was Charles H. Gere, to be for many years the editor of the 
Nebraska State Journal, and a future regent of the Univer- 
sity. The bill was returned to the senate on February 12 
with amendments and on the next day it was passed and 
sent to the house. It was read in the house a first and 
second time under suspension of rules, and referred to the 
committee on schools. The bill was read for the third time 
two days later, February 15, passed, and signed by Gov- 
ernor David Butler. On the last day of the legislative ses- 
sion of 1869, two years and six days from the date of the 
admission of Nebraska to statehood, the bill chartering the 
University became a law. 

As recorded in The Statutes of Nebraska for 1869, the 
law enacted 

That there shall be established in this state an institution 
under the name and style of "The University of Nebraska." The 
object of such institution shall be to afford to the inhabitants of 
the state the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the 
various branches of literature, science, and the arts. 

The charter of 1869 provided for six departments or col- 
leges: A college of ancient and modern literature, mathe- 
matics, and the natural sciences, i. e., a college of literature, 
the sciences, the arts ; of agriculture ; of law ; of medicine ; 
of the practical sciences, surveying and mechanics ; and of 
the fine arts. The college of fine arts was to be established 
when the annual income of the University reached $100,000. 
Six years later, by an amendment passed in 1875, the col- 
lege of agriculture was united with the practical sciences, 
reducing the six colleges to five. 



THE FOUNDING OF THE UNIVERSITY 15 

The government of the University of Nebraska was 
placed by the original charter in the hands of a board of 
twelve regents, nine of them to be chosen by the Legisla- 
ture in joint session, three from each judicial district. The 
nine regents were divided into three classes by lot, one 
person from each district to belong in each class. The term 
of office for the first class was two years, for the second, 
four years, for the third six years. The remaining three 
regents, the chancellor, the superintendent of public in- 
struction, and the governor, were members ex officio. The 
first members of the first board were appointed by the 
governor. 

The present organization of the University was adopted 
in 1877, after the formation of a new state constitution in 
1875. It placed the University under the control of six 
regents, to be elected, and made provision for its organiza- 
tion and administration. Section 10 of article 8, entitled 
"Education/' in the constitution of 1875 reads as follows, 
remodeling in several sections the act of 1869. 

The general government of the University of Nebraska shall, 
under direction of the legislature, be vested in a board of six 
regents, to be styled the Board of Regents of the University of 
Nebraska, who shall be elected by the electors of the state at 
large, and their terms of office, except those chosen at the first 
election as hereinafter provided, shall be six years. Their duties 
and powers shall be prescribed by law, and they shall receive no 
compensation, but may be reimbursed their actual expenses in- 
curred in discharge of their duties. 

The funds of the University are derived from various 
sources. An act of the United States Congress of July 22, 
1862, provided an endowment of land for the several states 
for the maintenance in each state of at least one college 
where branches relating to agriculture and the mechanic 
arts should be the main subjects of instruction. By the 
terms of this grant, instruction in military science must be 
given in these colleges. Nebraska's share in this land endow- 
ment amounted to 90,000 acres. These were selected in An- 
telope, Cedar, Cuming, Dakota, Dixon, L'Eau Qui Court 
(afterwards Knox) , Pierce, and Wayne counties. The en- 
abling act of April 19, 1864, providing for the admission of 



16 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

the state into the union, set apart and reserved for the use 
and support of a state university seventy-two sections of 
land, thus making a total of 136,080 acres of endowment 
lands. The proceeds of land sales, under the acts of Con- 
gress just named, constitute the permanent endowment 
fund of the University. Legal provision was made for the 
leasing of these lands, along with the common school lands, 
by the state board of public lands and buildings. Under 
an act of the legislature of 1897, no further sales of uni- 
versity lands can be made. The principal arising from 
former sales is paid into the permanent endowment fund, to 
be invested in securities, only the interest of which can be 
used for expenses. Unfortunately, before the legislature 
took action, in 1897, nearly all the endowment lands had 
been sold, or were under contract of sale. 

Income is also derived by the University from the 
money-grant act of Congress, known as the Morrill-Nelson 
act of August, 1890, in aid of the original land grant fund 
and to be used in the same way, and from the Hatch- Adams 
act of 1887, for the establishment of experiment stations. 
The other revenues of the University are derived from 
appropriations made by the legislature and from taxation. 
By an amendment, passed in 1899, of the original act estab- 
lishing the University, a tax of one mill per dollar on the 
grand assessment roll of the state is now provided, to be 
levied annually for the support of the University. 

The act establishing the University provided for a model 
farm. The governor was instructed to set apart two sec- 
tions of any agricultural college land or saline land belong- 
ing to the state, and to notify the state land commissioner 
of such reservation for laying out a model farm. Land 
so set apart was not to be used for any other purpose. In 
his message of 1871, Governor Butler recommended that 
as there were no such lands in an eligible situation, a sec- 
tion of state lands should be sold and the proceeds applied 
to the purchase of a farm of not more than 320 acres as 
near the University campus as possible. Selection was 
made, and the land so selected was purchased, and con- 
verted into the present University experiment station farm. 



THE FOUNDING OF THE UNIVERSITY 17 

The record narrates that on June 25, 1874, Moses M. Culver 
and his wife in consideration of $6,050 in cash and $11,550 
payable in four years, deeded to the regents the farm of 320 
acres which is known as the University farm, distant about 
two and one-half miles from the main campus. 

When provision was made for the erection of Univer- 
sity Hall, the first university building, through an act "pro- 
viding for the sale of unused lots and blocks on the town 
site of Lincoln and for the erection of a State University 
and Agricultural College," it was stipulated that the build- 
ing was not to exceed in cost $100,000. An account by Pro- 
fessor H. W. Caldwell, in a paper read before the State His- 
torical Society in 1889, of the building of University Hall 
and of its early history is so interesting as to deserve quota- 
tion at length: 

On June 5, 1869, the sale of lots began and the first day 105 
lots were sold for about $30,000. The next day The Commonwealth 
[the predecessor of The State Journal] remarked that 'now the 
completion of the State University and Agricultural College is 
assured.' Eleven days later the paper announced the arrival of 
Mr. R. D. Silver, who would immediately put in a large plant for 
manufacturing brick for the university — the capacity of the plant 
to be 12,000 brick a day. The plans of Mr. J. M. McBird, of 
Logansport, Indiana, were accepted on June 2, and on August 14, 
The Commonwealth contained an editorial description of the plans 
for the new building, classing the style of architecture as Franco- 
Italian. The same issue of the paper announced that the excava- 
tion for the basement of the university was completed. 

On August 18, 1869, the contract for the erection of the build- 
ing was let to Silver and Son for $128,480; soon afterward the 
troubles which followed the university for so many years began. 
Even the Brownville Advertiser, a good friend of the university, 
thought the policy of letting a contract for $28,480 more than the 
appropriation unwise. The State Journal came to the defense of 
the regents, arguing that it was better policy to begin the erection 
of a building of sufficient size and well suited to its uses, even if 
it were necessary to have an additional appropriation, than to spend 
$100,000 upon a building that would soon have to be torn down 
because unsuited to the needs of the future. The cornerstone was 
laid on September 23, 1869; two days after a glowing account ap- 
peared in the columns of The State Journal. The exercises were 
in the hands of the Masons with Major D. H. Wheeler as master 
of ceremonies. A brass band from Omaha, imported for the occa- 



18 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

sion, headed the procession. In the evening a grand banquet was 
given. Governor Butler made a few remarks and Mr. Wheeler a 
short speech. Then Attorney General Seth Robinson gave an ad- 
dress on 'Popular Education/ but as most of it concerned Greece 
and Rome, and very little of it related to Nebraska, any farther 
reference to it may be omitted here. The banquet — thanks to the 
good people of Lincoln — was enjoyed by fully a thousand people, 
dancing being indulged in from 10:00 until 4:00 o'clock. This 
was the beginning, but the end was not yet, as Lincoln people 
well knew. The regents visited the building and after inspection, 
approved the plans of construction on January 6, 1871, but before 
a student had ever entered its doors, the cry was raised that it 
was insecure. On June 13, 1871, three professional architects were 
employed to examine the building thoroughly. Their report was 
made June 23 and pronounced the building safe for the present 
and probably for years to come. The probability, they thought, 
could be made a certainty by a few repairs that would not be very 
expensive. These repairs were made and September 6 the uni- 
versity was opened with an enrollment of about ninety students 
the first week. However, the rumor of the insecurity of the build- 
ing would not down; so March 18, 1873, a special meeting of the 
regents was called to consider further repairs. After a report from 
another set of architects, a new foundation was ordered to be put 
under the chapel. The foundation walls, as they were torn out, 
were to be examined by an architect under the direction of the 
attorney-general, J. R. Webster, who reported that the foundation 
had not been in accordance with the contract. The Chancellor in 
his report of June 26, 1877, again called the attention of the board 
to the condition of the building. Four architects were now em- 
ployed, one from Omaha, one from Nebraska City, and two from 
Lincoln. On the strength of their report, the regents resolved, 
July 6, 1877, to tear down the building and to erect a new one at 
the cost of $60,000, $40,000 of this amount to be raised in Lincoln. 
Work was to commence immediately at securing the above amount. 
The citizens of Lincoln, however, were not satisfied, so they sent 
to Chicago and Dubuque for architects who examined the building 
and pronounced it easily repaired. A committee of Lincoln citizens 
met the regents on August 15. A new foundation with some other 
repair was ordered, and the bill of $6,012 was paid by Lincoln. 
Various attempts to secure an appropriation to reimburse the city 
have been made, but all have ended in failure. At the same time 
the roof was repaired at an expense of $1,625, but the water still 
found its way through, till finally in 1883 a slate roof was put on 
and the 'leak' was stopped. 

Just after the reconsideration of the resolution to tear down 
the building, a committee came from Nebraska City to present a 
bid for the re-location of the University at that point. This was 



THE FOUNDING OF THE UNIVERSITY 19 

the last public scare, although several thousand dollars have since 
been spent in replacing the inner foundation walls and in making 
other necessary repairs. Undoubtedly the faulty construction of 
the building delayed the growth of the University considerably; 
certainly it used up much of its funds that were greatly needed 
elsewhere. 

A complete history of the University on its academic 
side, till 1900, by Professor Caldwell, is published in the 
Circulars of Information of the United States Educational 
Bureau for 1902, as part of his article on "Higher Educa- 
tion in Nebraska." 

The University opened with the single college of litera- 
ture, science, and the arts. It offered courses in Latin, 
Greek, and the sciences. The first faculty consisted of 
Allen R. Benton, A. M., LL. D., chancellor and professor of 
intellectual and moral science; A. H. Manley, professor of 
ancient languages and literature; Henry E. Hitchcock, A. 
M., professor of mathematics; O. C. Dake, professor of 
rhetoric and English literature; Samuel Aughey, A. M., 
professor of chemistry and natural science; George E. 
Church, A. M., principal of the Latin school ; S. R. Thomp- 
son, professor in the department of agriculture. The first 
duty of the professor of agriculture is said to have been to 
plant trees and to arrange walks on the campus. The first 
students to attend the University were the following: 
Freshmen, Frank Hurd, Tecumseh ; Uriah M. Malick, Cam- 
den; H. Kanaga Metcalf, Rock Creek; W. H. Sheldon, Per- 
cival, Iowa; Mary W. Sessions, Lincoln; sophomores, Wal- 
lace M. Stephens, Nebraska City ; William H. Snell, Lincoln ; 
junior, J. Stuart Dales, East Rochester, Ohio. Mr. Dales 
and Mr. Snell were the first students to receive degrees, 
granted them in 1873. In addition to the regular students 
already named, there were twelve irregular students and 
110 students in the preparatory school, making a total of 
130 students in attendance during the first year. Fifty 
years later, the University has students not only from 
Nebraska and from every state in the union, but from 
Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and from many countries 
of the European continent. 



20 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

University Hall, the original home of the University, 
of late years held together, to ensure its safety from fall- 
ing, by steel uprights, is still the home of the Arts College, 
the oldest of the colleges. Its recitation rooms and offices, 
which house classes in history, language, literature, and 
rhetoric, look time-stained and battered, in comparison 
with the new and attractive quarters of the natural 
sciences, the technical sciences, the social sciences, and the 
vocational and agricultural schools. But those who teach 
in the old building are glad to do so ; indeed they take pride 
in doing so. They feel a deep love for it, for University 
Hall is the historic building, among those on the campus, 
and the classes reciting in it are those first desired by the 
founders of the institution. 

The University of Nebraska reflects, in the stages of 
its development, the shifting conceptions of the province of 
a state university that characterize the decades since its 
foundation. The primary purpose of the founders of the 
University was to provide a liberal or cultural education 
for the youth of the state, in order to make of them — as 
it has made of them — more rounded and valuable citizens. 
With the growth of the institution in scholarship, and the 
development of its graduate school, came a consciousness 
of the historic mission of a university, namely to preserve 
and if possible to add to the learning of the world, that 
asset of civilization. This may be called the function of 
the university proper, as distinguished from the secondary 
school and from the college. Last to be reflected in its de- 
velopment is the present-day conception of a state univer- 
sity as an institution of public usefulness, where training 
may be had in all lines, cultural, aesthetic, scientific, voca- 
tional, commercial, which the people of the state, who are 
its supporters, may desire. 

Louise Pound. 



ADMISSION AND CURRICULA 21 



ADMISSION AND CURRICULA 

The way to begin is to begin/ This doubtless means 
that what one does to set about a beginning often breaks 
inertia and becomes peculiarly and vitally the beginning 
itself. It is hesitancy over the first step that has kept many 
a chapter of potential history unwritten. 

When a college is opened in a community where there 
are no students asking or waiting to be admitted, there 
are evidently other forces than evolutional in control. The 
great universities were severally the result of need, and not 
an effort to create it. In 1871 the University of Nebraska 
was emphatically the seeker and not the sought. Some of 
its first alumni came to be students through the advice, 
and indeed, in a sense, the solicitation, of its head. 

Thus was the higher education precipitated in Nebraska. 
There being no secondary education to serve for prepara- 
tion, the University was forced to administer it to itself. 
For years in consequence its chief enrollment was in its 
Latin School. Until the middle eighties the University of 
Nebraska was spoken of in legislative debates as the Lin- 
coln High School. There was little knowledge of it in the 
State at large until Chancellor Canfield, in 1891-1895, car- 
ried the evangel of opportunity to every considerable town 
and village. College classes were now filled to repletion, 
and preparatory courses were discontinued. 

Amusing stories of the period thus closed indicate that 
some of the early students were but feebly 'fitted.' Pro- 
fessor Woodberry, acting as examiner, is said to have 
astonished an applicant by asking merely, 'Can you read/ 
and by reporting to him, after proof of that accomplish- 
ment, 'You pass.' This admission was, of course, to the 
Latin School. There is evidence that Professor Woodberry 
found little fault with the quality of the students that 
reached him eventually in the college. Nowhere was great- 
er promise discovered or developed than under his exacting 
standards. 



22 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

Professor Woodberry's designated subjects were Rhetor- 
ic and Anglo-Saxon. Old English was at that time taught 
as a college subject as far west as Grinnell, then known as 
Iowa College. In his earlier connection with the University, 
Professor Woodberry had offered a course in Ancient Law. 
A graduate of those days was heard of trying to pass along 
his acquaintance with Sir Henry Maine's text on that sub- 
ject to a group of farmers at a country schoolhouse. He 
did not finish his course of lectures or his term of teach- 
ing. The same student before graduation sought on a cer- 
tain occasion to explain a specific function of sight as un- 
doubtedly a survival from the time when there were eyes 
over the whole surface of the body. He was evidently try- 
ing to work Spencer's formula of evolution from homogene- 
ity to heterogeneity backwards as well as forwards. 

But it was not often that the wine of knowledge went 
to the head that way. With sounder and more deliberate 
preparation came a clearer notion of the values derivable 
from college training. The University Calendar for 1885- 
1886, under the subject of "Admissions," included this sug- 
gestive sentence: 

Candidates from the High Schools of Beatrice, Hastings, Lin- 
coln, Nebraska City, and Plattsmouth will be admitted to the Fresh- 
man class without examination. 

Ten years later this list had grown to an exhibit of 
sixty-four names. Chancellor Canfield's success in filling 
the halls of instruction with college students was due to 
the plan of accrediting secondary schools, which had been 
put into effect in 1884. This delay of a dozen years in get- 
ting the University into relations with the public school 
system, of which it was theoretically a part, was not a lit- 
tle fostered from within the faculty. One of its prominent 
members, who had served previously as State Superintend- 
ent of Public Instruction, opposed use of the high school, — 
"the people's college," as means of preparation for the 
University. His successor, not at all of the same mind, 
came enthusiastically to the support of Chancellor Manatt, 
who, on arrival, had proposed the scheme. Chancellor Can- 
field following set the whole State agog, as we have seen, 



ADMISSION AND CURRICULA 23 

for higher education. Chancellor Canfield's rival interest, 
which was to make the lawmakers of Nebraska know the 
worth of its chief institution, cost him the hardest joke of 
his four years' incumbency. At a luncheon given in his 
honor at the Commercial Club, on his leaving for Ohio, he 
spoke reminiscently of his work, and mentioned incidentally 
that he had traveled for the University not less than 200,000 
miles. The moderator thanked him for furnishing, on the 
eve of his departure, a definite report on the mileage of 
his visits to the Capitol during legislative sessions. 

The specific requirements for admission to the Fresh- 
man class were, at this time, except that Virgil was not 
included for Latin or Xenophon for Greek, essentially the 
same as now. Two semesters' further study in each of 
these languages was soon after added. Greek was taught 
in a considerable number of high schools, Latin in all. 
Latin through six semesters was prerequisite for all the 
scientific groups, including the Engineering and the Agri- 
cultural. Present standard requirements in science date 
from the same years. Preparation in French and German 
was accepted in part fulfillment of language conditions as 
early as 1900, and allowed in full substitution after 1911. 
Other optional subjects were later added, finally raising the 
number of necessary points to thirty. 

Research studies were introduced at about the same 
time in Botany, Chemistry, and Physics, and what was 
called "original work" in languages and History. A new 
member of the teaching force had offered courses, with 
mistaken perspective, in Sanskrit and Gothic in the Calen- 
dar of 1883 — an anticipation realized by classes in each 
subject under another instructor five years later. The first 
fruits of academic expansion were given to the public in 
the opening number of University Studies, issued in the 
summer of 1888. This included an article on "The Eighth 
Verb-Class in Sanskrit," and a mathematical discussion 
concerning "The Transparency of the Ether." The latter 
was reproduced, in an abridged form, in the Annalen der 
Physik und Chemie of the following year. 

L. A. Sherman. 



24 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



EARLY FACULTY AND EQUIPMENT 

The imagination is sometimes kindled by contrasts in 
the bigness of human achievements. Assuredly the strug- 
gling infant of 1871-2 and the bouncing youngster of 1919 
offer a sufficiently striking contrast. Then — and for fifteen 
years thereafter — the "plant" consisted of a single building. 
Now the city campus has twenty-one buildings ; while at the 
"Farm" — where during the first decade a small frame cot- 
tage and a rude barn served to "house" the college of agri- 
culture — there are at present, big and little, thirty-two 
structures. Then the full faculty list comprised seven 
names. Now the pay-roll of the University numbers 800 
persons, 313 of whom are professors, instructors, and others 
with "fixed stipends." During the first year were regis- 
tered 130 students, all but 20 of whom were in the two sub- 
freshman years, called the Latin School. The total sank to 
123 in the second year and to 100 in the third. At the close 
of a decade, in 1882, the entire student body, including 67 
pupils in the Latin School, numbered but 284 souls ; where- 
as in 1916-17, at the end of the forty-fifth year of active 
work, the roster of the University, including "schools" and 
"extension" students, enrolls a grand total of 5,405 men and 
women. A like contrast is revealed by the expanding bud- 
get. During the first year the total expenditure for all 
activities of the institution, including repairs and the 
"beautifying" of grounds, was $26,840.69 ; in the eight years 
(1879-1880) it had fallen to $25,197; while during the pres- 
ent biennium, including building, the University is costing 
the sum of $4,000,000. Huge as this figure seems, it should 
be speedily increased to $6,000,000 per biennium, if salaries 
and equipment are to be raised to their just level. 

Still bigness is not everything. "Mark Hopkins on a 
log" may not accurately express the modern ideal of a uni- 
versity. The epigram does, however, contain a precious 
kernel of truth. It exalts the vital quality of the teacher's 
personality. A very humble habitation in which lives a 
great soul may mean much for the spiritual life of a com- 



EARLY FACULTY AND EQUIPMENT 25 

monwealth. For fifteen years — until 1886 when the first 
chemical laboratory was ready for use — the old central 
building on the city campus — in recent years known as 
"University Hall" — was the sole domicile of the University 
of Nebraska. In popular phrase it was "The University." 
Of a truth that modest structure deserves the respect, the 
reverence, of the people of the state, as it has the honor and 
love of the men and women — many builders of the common- 
wealth — who caught inspiration within its walls. What 
those two ancient Halls at her campus gate are to Harvard, 
the venerable University Hall should be to our own institu- 
tion. Let it not be touched by any destroying hand. Let 
it stand as long as nature may suffer it to endure as a 
monument to the courageous souls who with slender means 
during lean years and perilous crises laid the spiritual 
foundations of Nebraska's chief temple of learning. 

In the little rooms of that old structure were fostered 
into vigorous life many of the "departments" which now 
find their homes each in a separate building or even in sev- 
eral buildings; while some of those departments have ex- 
panded into "schools" and "colleges." Thus, for a decade 
and a half, chemistry found a home in 104, the little north- 
east room on the first floor. Physics, under Professor Col- 
lier, was housed in 102 and 103 just opposite. At a later 
time rooms 103 and 104 became the cradle of the college of 
Engineering; for there, in the eighties, Professor C. N. 
Little developed a vigorous department of Civil Engineer- 
ing, one of whose early products was Dean Stout, now head 
of the college. History, the first of the social sciences to 
be organized, got its start in 204, the northeast corner room 
on the second floor; while in 205, the adjacent room, the 
office and the collections of the State Historical Society 
were sheltered for six years, 1885-1891. In that same tiny, 
ill-lighted cubicle, in 1889-1891, Dr. Amos G. Warner, Pro- 
fessor Howard W. Caldwell, and the writer organized a 
joint seminar of history and economics; the first graduate 
seminar to be founded in the University of Nebraska. The 
genesis of the department of philosophy took place in room 
112 on the first floor; and this same room, for many years 



26 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

the Chancellor's office — for a long time the only "office" — 
was the embryo of Administration Hall. The beginnings 
of the University library were sufficiently humble. Its 
germ-cell was room 202 on the second floor. For fifteen 
years that cramped space served as stack-room and read- 
ing-room combined. The annual expenditure for books was 
not lavish. According to the report of the librarian for the 
year ending June 8, 1881, seventy-two bound volumes had 
been added during the period ; while the entire library then 
consisted of 2,781 bound volumes and 700 pamphlets : about 
two-thirds the size of the present "Howard Reference 
Library" for the department of Political Science and 
Sociology. 

Such were the scanty materials with which the first 
faculty undertook the hard and delicate task of building a 
university on the Nebraska plains. They were not men 
of wide national repute. Several had had experience in 
small denominational colleges. Not one was of transcend- 
ant ability. Most of them were persons of strong character 
and high ideals. The dominant conservatism of the group 
was a real safeguard in undertaking the then bold experi- 
ment of determining the methods, planning the curriculum, 
and starting the traditions of a secular, a public, Univer- 
sity for a pioneer society. 

One naturally turns first to the man at the helm. It 
was fortunate for the state that Dr. A. R. Benton was 
called to the high task of organizing and first administer- 
ing the Chancellor's office. In 1871, when he took charge 
of the work, public sentiment was not clearly in favor of 
the state support and control of college education. Many 
feared that harm would follow from the secularization of 
higher education. The state university as an institution 
was still on trial in the United States. Furthermore, as 
yet, public opinion strongly favored broad cultural courses 
of instruction. True, there was already a demand for more 
generous recognition of the sciences as a necessary founda- 
tion for the world's work ; but the enormous differentiation 
of the department-subjects which now fill the register was 
then hardly dreamed of. The traditional belief that higher 



EARLY FACULTY AND EQ UIPMENT 27 

education should be religiously, even ecclesiastically, di- 
rected was still strong; but it was in process of transition 
to the ideal of its entire secularization. Chancellor Benton 
had just the qualities of heart and mind, the breadth of hu- 
manism, needed in the transition stage. While he was an 
enlightened and faithful representative of orthodox Chris- 
tianity, he was able firmly to grasp the new ideal of public 
education as the safeguard of society. He was tolerant in 
his daily walk and conversation. He was a refined gentle- 
man ; a scholar accomplished in the humanities of his day. 
Furthermore, he was a good teacher ; for he was both chan- 
cellor and professor of "intellectual and moral science," be- 
sides finding time on the side to teach classes in Latin, 
Greek, and history. He was able to co-operate with his 
colleagues in their great task. As a result, during his term 
of service (1871-1876), the University of Nebraska was 
solidly planted. It passed rapidly through the first and 
critical stage of institutional growth. It struck its roots 
deeply in the affections of the people. As a faithful and 
efficient social servant, as a conscientious and prudent in- 
stitution-builder, the name of A. R. Benton is enrolled 
among the most honored and the most beloved makers of 
the commonwealth. 

It is with feelings of intense pleasure that I recall the 
personalities of the little group of teachers constituting the 
first faculty of the University. The "professor of ancient 
languages and literature" was A. H. Manley, a refined, 
gently-speaking scholar of the old regime. S. R. Thompson, 
"professor of theoretical and practical agriculture," and 
after 1873, "dean of the college of agriculture," did the 
best he could at a time when in the United States the col- 
lege of agriculture as an institution had not yet discovered 
its right functions nor its proper methods. Samuel Aughey, 
graduated at Pennsylvania College in 1856 and recently 
(1867-1871) in the employ of the Smithsonian Institution, 
was placed in charge of a veritable settee of subjects. His 
professorship of "chemistry and natural sciences" was suf- 
ficiently broad, even for pioneer days, embracing all the 
instruction given in botany, zoology, geology, and chemis- 



28 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

try. In addition, for several years, he taught the classes 
in German and devoted his remaining spare time to the col- 
lection of an herbarium of the flora of the state. Professor 
Aughey was a lovable personality. He possessed a vast 
amount of miscellaneous knowledge ; but the enormous bur- 
den laid upon his shoulders by the University did not tend 
to foster scientific precision. 

H. E. Hitchcock, "professor of mathematics," was for 
his time an accomplished scholar. He was called from the 
same chair at Knox College where he graduated in 1846., He 
was a devoted teacher, a good citizen, a generous neighbor, 
a strong moral force in the community. "Professor Hitch- 
cock," writes H. W. Caldwell in his excellent history, "was 
accurate, systematic, and always at his post;" surely a 
tribute of which a teacher may well be proud. 

Perhaps the most interesting, not to say picturesque 
and eccentric, character in that little band of institution- 
builders was the Rev. Orsamus C. Dake, the first "professor 
of rhetoric and English literature" and the first dean of 
the Arts College. He possessed the scholarly tastes and 
the refined manners of a typical clergyman of the Protest- 
ant Episcopal Church. He represented the aesthetic ele- 
ment in the teaching force. He loved literature as a fine 
art; and his lofty ideals, keen sensibilities, and poetic im- 
agination are revealed in his two volumes of verse, the 
Nebraska Legends and Poems (1871) and the Midland 
Poems (1873). These little books are the first contribution 
of the University to genuine literature ; and they constitute 
a worthy monument to the great souled humanist who 
shed a refining influence on the academic life during his 
brief term of service; for he died in 1875. 

A remarkable personality of a quite different type was 
George E. Church, "principal of the Latin School" and, 
after 1874, first "professor of Latin language and litera- 
ture." A man of powerful intellect and commanding pres- 
ence, Professor Church was easily the most "modern" 
scholar and the best trained teacher in the University. 
Under his hand the foundation of the Latin department 
was solidly laid. After his return from Germany in 1878, 



EARLY FACULTY AND EQUIPMENT 29 

the most efficient methods were introduced. In his academic 
career Professor Church displayed the great native ability 
which for many years has made him the brilliant judge of 
the superior court in Fresno, California, where he is still 
leader of the bar. 

It remains to offer a tribute of honor and affection to 
the noble woman who was first of her sex to hold a teach- 
ing position in the University of Nebraska. Miss Ellen 
Smith entered the faculty in the spring of 1877. In vari- 
ous capacities — as "instructor in Latin and Greek," "prin- 
cipal of the Latin School," "custodian of the library," and 
"registrar" — she served the University for twenty-four 
years zealously and efficiently (1877-1901). Her toilsome 
life was consecrated to the conscientious performance of 
duty. She was the very type of womanly faithfulness and 
humanism. She was loved by the students, even by those 
whom she rebuked for their shortcomings ; and she was re- 
spected by her colleagues, even by those whom as registrar 
she frankly scolded for laxity in rendering their official 
reports. Her staunch personality was the very symbol of 
probity and moral courage. Her example was a precious 
influence in the academic life. Let us honor the work of 
Ellen Smith as a rich earnest of the equal share which 
women shall have in building the future university when 
the sex-line shall not be drawn in determining either the 
choice or the rewards of its servants. 

George Elliott Howard. 



30 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES 

To the honor of Nebraska, at the very beginning of its 
life, its citizens were ready to act in full harmony with the 
rising tide of higher education. The Hon. Augustus F. 
Harvey, who drafted the University Charter, was inter- 
ested in a university rather than a college, and with a chan- 
cellor rather than a president as its head. His aim was to 
combine in one organization all lines of higher education, 
and he planned to include in the University of Nebraska, 
located at Lincoln, advanced work in the fields of language 
and literature, law, medicine, art, science, manual training, 
and agriculture. By this unity he hoped that the educa- 
tional expenses of the state would be lessened, and that the 
opportunity for all students to find the fields in which they 
had the greatest interest and ability would be increased. 

The act as it was passed in 1869 provided for six col- 
leges, which indicated the fields of education in mind at 
that time: "first, a college of ancient and modern litera- 
ture, mathematics, and the natural sciences; second, a col- 
lege of agriculture ; third, a college of law ; fourth, a college 
of medicine ; fifth, a college of practical science, civil engin- 
eering, and mechanics; and sixth, a college of fine arts." 
Naturally it took many years to work out the very exten- 
sive and complex plans of the charter of 1869. One smiles 
now as he looks back on the simplicity of the first years 
of the new institution, but he soon sees in those simple 
beginnings the promise of greater things. 

University Hall, the first building erected, and the only 
one on the campus until 1886, was practically completed 
by September, 1871. On Thursday, September 7th, of that 
year, the University and its preparatory or "Latin" school 
held their inaugural meetings, and the life of the University 
of Nebraska began. Only one college — not six — was opened, 
"the college of ancient and modern literature, mathematics, 
and the natural sciences." The Chancellor and six pro- 
fessors had been selected, but only five of the seven were 
present during the year 1871-72. The courses of study of- 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES 31 

f ered were as follows : "moral science" by Chancellor A. R. 
Benton; "ancient languages" by Professor A. H. Manly, 
"English literature and rhetoric" by Professor 0. C. Dake, 
"physics and natural science" by Professor S. Aughey. The 
above professors, and Principal G. E. Church, taught what- 
ever mathematics and modern languages were given in that 
year. It is interesting to notice that there were only twenty 
college students in attendance this first year: one junior, 
two sophomores, five freshmen, and twelve irregulars. In 
the following years the growth was very slight; yet the 
figures given indicate that on the whole the life of the 
University was slowly improving. The students enrolled 
for the years from 1871 to 1877 were 20, 46, 43, 48, 66, and 
67 respectively, while those present in the Latin school 
were 110, 77, 57, 69, 198, 161. 

The agricultural college, the second college to be or- 
ganized, was started in 1872 with S. R. Thompson as dean 
and professor of theoretical and practical agriculture. In 
1874 the present agricultural farm was acquired, and dur- 
ing the year 1874-75 its first student body, fifteen in num- 
ber, entered the University. Again it is interesting to 
notice that years passed before any significant growth took 
place. In fact, the number of students in the new college 
decreased until in later years a reorganization took place. 
The students in the college of agriculture from 1875 to 1881 
numbered as follows: 15, 13, 16, 9, 9, 12 — thus showing 
that a purely agricultural state did not as yet afford popular 
support to a purely agricultural school. 

Nebraska formed a new state constitution in 1875. 
Under its provisions a new board of regents was elected 
by the people. They had power to make changes in uni- 
versity organization, and this gave to the institution an 
adaptability that it had not before possessed. Their action 
in 1877 changed the titles of the colleges and reduced the 
number to five, as follows: "first, a college of literature, 
science, and the arts; second, an industrial college embrac- 
ing architecture, practical science, civil engineering, and 
the mechanic arts ; third, a college of law ; fourth, a college 
of medicine ; fifth, a college of fine arts." The main purpose 



32 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

of the industrial college was to connect the agricultural 
work with science, engineering, and mechanics, in order to 
save, and thus develop, agricultural work. It was as dean 
of this college that Dr. Charles E. Bessey gave to the Uni- 
versity the best years of his life; and though he outlived 
the college itself, he did so only to step into still higher 
rank, and into a still higher place in the regard of the 
University of the state. 

Had the union of agriculture with science and mechanics 
not taken place when it did it is almost certain that the 
agricultural college would have been removed to some other 
section of the state. Even after the growth of the indus- 
trial college, demands were made for the establishment of 
an agricultural college away from Lincoln and the Univer- 
sity. In 1885 an attempt was made to divide the industrial 
college and remove the agricultural section. This move- 
ment was repeated in 1889, and the plan probably failed 
of realization in the legislature only from lack of time. 

The first important increase in the number of profes- 
sors took place in 1877 when the total rose to fifteen. Later, 
with the establishment of the various colleges, and with 
the growth of the student body, a rapid development took 
place. By 1890 there were nineteen on the academic facul- 
ty, twenty-two on the industrial faculty, eight in the Latin 
school, three in fine arts, and nine on the working staff 
of the agricultural experiment station. There was a good 
deal of overlapping, indeed, for there were altogether only 
thirty-two teachers in the University. By 1912 the faculty 
had increased to 238 professors and assistants, with ninety 
others in the pay of the University in various capacities. 

The plan adopted in 1877 for reorganizing the colleges 
of the University remained the legal form until 1908-09. 
During the years 1877 to 1908 all the colleges provided for 
in the act of 1877 except that of fine arts were founded. 
In the earlier part of this period the development of the 
University was mainly in the arts college. After 1883 
new departments were organized, and development began 
to spread to other fields. But it was not until the '90's 
that any remarkably rapid growth began to take place. 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES 33 

Doubtless the foundation had been laid for real progress, 
but the word university can hardly be used for the institu- 
tion before that date, and it was not until after 1908 that 
the full organization of all colleges was made. 

Though the largest attendance during these years — 
1877-1908 — was in the college of literature, science and the 
arts, yet the enrollment in the industrial college was rela- 
tively large. All the teaching, however, except in certain 
phases of agriculture, took place on the city campus and 
not at the Farm; and as a rule a large proportion of the 
students of the two colleges were in the same classes. These 
facts led many to hold that the real attendance in the col- 
lege of agriculture was very slight, and hence that a re- 
organization ought to be made. This was effected, and 
since 1909 a remarkable growth and development in the 
agricultural departments have taken place. The agricul- 
tural college was clearly denned, and its students were 
taught at the Farm by professors and instructors of agri- 
culture. The field was made very broad and included full 
four-year courses in many branches, all calculated to give 
preparation for practicing or teaching in matters connected 
with farm work or home industrial life. The college now 
had as its head a dean of agriculture, A. E. Burnett, an 
able man of exceptional merit and great organizing capa- 
city. 

The medical college was opened in 1883, and remained 
an organized college until 1888, when it was closed, in part 
on account of expense and in part on account of state criti- 
cism. In 1902 the medical college was revived under the 
dean ship of Professor H. B. Ward. Under the new arrange- 
ment the first two years of the medical course were pursued 
in the laboratories at Lincoln and the last two in the clinical 
courses of the Omaha Medical College. In 1913 the whole 
medical college was removed to Omaha to take advantage 
of the better hospital facilities of the larger city. At this 
move, the Omaha Medical College was absorbed and re- 
organized by the University itself. The medical course at 
present involves a six-years' curriculum of which the first 
two, or pre-medical years, are pursued at Lincoln. 



34 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

In 1908, with R. A. Lyman as head, a school of pharmacy 
was established as an adjunct of the medical college. After- 
wards, in 1915, the legislature erected this school into an 
independent college. It is now about to enter a permanent 
home in the remodeled building which the chemistry de- 
partment has recently vacated. 

The college of law was founded in 1892, and has re- 
mained unchanged in form and name to the present time. 
It attained its effective organization under Dean Roscoe 
Pound, who served it from 1903 to 1907, and was then 
called successively to the law colleges at Northwestern, 
Chicago, and Harvard. He is now dean of Harvard Law 
School. The present dean, Judge W. G. Hastings, acted 
as Chancellor of the University during 1918. At America's 
entry into the war practically all the students of the law 
college, and at least one of the faculty, entered the military 
service. With their return the college is again taking up 
its work with a normally large attendance. 

Important changes were made by the state legislature 
under the advice of the Chancellor and the regents of the 
University in 1909. By one such change the old "college 
of literature, science, and the arts" received the title "col- 
lege of arts and sciences." The province of this college 
included the ancient and modern languages, history, econ- 
omics, political science and sociology, rhetoric and English, 
mathematics, philosophy, and the physical sciences. It will 
thus be seen that its field was more clearly defined. 

The college of engineering was provided for at the same 
time, and was so constituted as to include all the depart- 
ments of engineering, drawing, certain phases of mathe- 
matics and natural science. It was organized first under 
Dean C. R. Richards, now of the University of Illinois, and 
since 1912 has been in charge of Dean 0. V. P. Stout. 

In 1908 provision was made for a teacher's college, thus 
adding a new field for the work of the University. A college 
high school was created, and senior college students were 
trained as teachers under the principal of the school and 
his assistants. The registration has been large, and the 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES 35 

work has been of such a grade that those who have re- 
ceived a state teacher's certificate as a result of their work 
there are recognized in most states as prepared teachers. 
From 1914 to 1918 a graduate college of education was con- 
ducted and a provision was made for a dean and a commit- 
tee to plan work for the degrees of master of arts and doctor 
of philosophy. 

In correlation with all the undergraduate colleges, there 
was established in 1893 a graduate college under the dean- 
ship of Professor A. H. Edgren. Thus the structure of the 
real university was rounded out before the close of the first 
quarter century. Since Professor Edgren's departure in 
1900 the graduate college has been developed under Dr. L. 
A. Sherman, head of the department of English. 

This brief outline brings out the growth of the Univer- 
sity, both in clearness of organization and in development 
of lines of work. The colleges of its fiftieth year are well 
arranged, and all are in distinct life, and well attended. It 
is still true, however, that the college of arts and sciences 
stands first in numbers both of faculty and of students. 

The word school as it has been used in connection with 
branches of work in the University has varied, and still 
varies, in meaning. At first, from 1871 to 1895, it was ap- 
plied to the "Latin school" for preparatory work. In early 
days — perhaps until 1885 — the number of students in the 
Latin school was greater than in all the colleges of the 
University proper. In later years the word school has been 
used to designate collegiate as well as preparatory organi- 
zations. A "sugar school" existed from 1896 to 1900, but 
the failure of the beet sugar work in the eastern part of 
the state, together with the request of the agricultural col- 
lege, led to its elimination. A "school of mechanic arts," 
formed in 1896, became a part of the engineering college 
in 1909 ; and a "school of domestic science" created in 1898 
was transferred to the state farm in 1906 and included in 
the agricultural college. 

Other schools that have been formed are still in exist- 
ence, and in process of development. The school of fine 
arts, established in 1898, is now, under Professor Paul 



36 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

Grummann as director, an important section of the work 
of the University. Art and music are taught in their his- 
tory, theory, and practice, with a regular four years' course, 
so that degrees are granted to its students on the same 
basis as to the students of the colleges. 

The work in commerce and accounting developed under 
Professor J. E. LeRossignol was given definite standing as 
a school in 1913, with Professor LeRossignol as its director. 
Under the new social and educational conditions its work 
promises to develop and become more and more important, 
as the years go on. The school of commerce has just been 
elevated by the regents to a college, as this anniversary book 
goes to press. 

There are, under the control of the board of regents, 
two schools of preparatory rank, one at the Farm and one 
at Curtis, both devoted to the teaching of agricultural 
subjects. 

H. W. Caldwell. 



BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS 

The commissioners who located and laid out the capital 
city and set aside four blocks for the University campus, 
must have selected the location of these four blocks when 
blindfolded. No good angel whispered to them of seats of 
learning set upon the hills. The gentle slopes of the Ante- 
lope valley were ignored, and a site bordering on Salt Creek 
valley and inevitably in the path of railroads, then immin- 
ent, was chosen. Next, with money derived from the sale 
of lots in the new capital city, the commission proceeded 
to erect a building. The methods of contractors and of- 
ficial boards were genuinely American, however. The legis- 
lature had appropriated $100,000 for the erection of a build- 
ing. In June, 1869, seemingly in anticipation of a contract, 
R. D. Silver arrived in Lincoln to establish a brickyard, 
and on August 18, following, his foresight was justified by 
the award of the contract for the University building for 
$128,480. Troubles arose very soon afterwards, and their 



BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS 37 

ramifications contributed to the pioneer history of the state, 
involving finally the governor, who as president of the 
board of regents, had approved the expenditure of a sum 
in excess of the appropriation. Charges to this effect formed 
one of the items in a subsequent impeachment trial. 

In his first report, made in June, 1872, Chancellor Ben- 
ton said, "Some difficulty has been experienced in making 
the roof impervious to rain." It may be added in this con- 
nection that this difficulty in achieving imperviousness has 
persisted down to date, and was a matter of common knowl- 
edge and comment in the student body through all the earlier 
college generations. In his first report, the chancellor also 
called the attention of the regents to the furnaces which 
failed to heat the building and were costly to operate. In 
his second report in June, 1873, he stated that class rooms 
had been heated by stoves during the past winter, and ad- 
vocated the introduction of stoves in the chapel also. Early 
generations of students remember the ugly and insatiable 
stoves that made winter use of the old chapel possible, but 
never comfortable. The old chapel, in the north wing of 
what is now known as University Hall, occupied the second 
and third floors, the rostrum being at the north end, with a 
gallery across the south end. The seats were the traditional 
pews. With its wealth of bleak walls, its stained and peril- 
ous ceiling, a more uninspiring room cannot well be im- 
agined; but pioneer spirit was not so easily daunted. 

Until the installation of a steam-heated plant in the east 
side of the north wing of the basement in 1885, the janitor 
service was performed by students who were remunerated 
very modestly, one, at least, being permitted to sleep in the 
building. The care of from twenty-five to thirty hard-coal 
base burners constituted the most laborious part of the 
janitor work. Huge ash-heaps accumulated in the angle 
west of the north wing. Pioneer children mounted these 
ash heaps in order to view the skeletons in the museum on 
the first floor, underneath the chapel. 

With the coming of the steam plant, John Green entered 
the service of the university as head janitor and engineer. 
Until the removal of the heating plant to the new boiler 



38 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

house in 1888, the policing of the campus brought student 
life in close touch with the head janitor. If the students 
chanted some appropriate air when John appeared to turn 
out the lights, the chances were that the lights would not 
go out too abruptly. If they invited John to their Thanks- 
giving "feed," they usually were privileged to wash their 
dishes in the steam down in the boiler room. When they 
graduated, they hunted for John when adieus to the campus 
were in order, and heard something like this: "Well, I 
don't see what the university is going to do for students 
next year. When your class is gone, there won't be any- 
body worth while around any more." 

Old "U Hall" has withstood the vicissitudes and calum- 
nies of time, and still is doing good service to the state. 
Condemned as physically unfit from its beginning, the build- 
ing has undergone, from time to time, extensive repairs. 
The original foundation, chiefly of soft brown sandstone, 
was removed and a limestone foundation substituted. For 
months the building stood on jack-screws and, be it not for- 
gotten, also on its complete system of inside cross walls, 
which extend from the basement to the roof. Three years 
ago its front walls were found to be bulging a few inches. 
The regents, with a retinue of architects and engineers, 
filed solemnly through the building, and the result is a 
series of steel uprights riveted through the building from 
south to north by steel cables, making it indubitably safe, 
and giving the exterior what Chancellor Avery describes 
as a "corduroy effect." 

Inside it is much the same as of yore, except that the 
chapel, after being once remodelled was finally divided into 
two floors and further remodelled for class room purposes. 
The same old bell that summoned the first students to morn- 
ing prayers — a bell now cracked and scarcely audible on 
the outskirts of the old campus — summons the younger, 
gayer, better dressed and housed students to convocation, 
or announces football victories. During the war it tolled 
the eleven o'clock angelus up to November 11, 1918. 

The original campus covered four city blocks. Until 
1886 University Hall was the sole edifice. The campus 



BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS 39 

differed little in appearance from the prairie about it for 
a number of years. Citizens tethered their family cows 
on it, children picked violets and buffalo beans there. Chan- 
cellor Benton's first report describes plans for walks, drives 
and tree planting, and mentions consultations with land- 
scape artists in Chicago, and the final selection of home 
talent for the purpose. It was planned to experiment with 
a variety of species of trees. A hedge of red cedar and 
osage orange was placed about the campus, and hundreds 
of trees were planted, only to perish. In the Chancellor's 
report in June, 1875, it is stated that the professor and stu- 
dents of the agricultural college had planted trees all around 
the campus with great care and that the janitor had ad- 
mirably tended the grounds, though the floral part had 
several times been cut down by locusts. Gravelled walks 
led from the streets to the building, and the grounds were 
partially enclosed at one time, by a board fence. As years 
went on board walks consisting of two parallel planks about 
a foot apart were laid — a contribution to the gaiety of the 
campus literature, as examination of the Hesperian files, on 
the subject of "coeducational sidewalks," will attest. 

During the administration of Chancellor Canfield the 
legislature made a special appropriation for the iron fence 
which now surrounds the original campus. 

The old University building was filled to overflowing 
with faculty, students, and equipment, when the chemistry 
building was first occupied by the natural science depart- 
ments in 1886. The University then entered on a period 
of rapid expansion, and every legislature since that of 1885, 
with the exception of those of 1893 and 1901, has made 
special appropriations for University buildings to the total 
amount of over three million dollars. The difficulty of 
securing the building appropriations was so great in the 
earlier period that success was the signal for student demon- 
strations on the campus and around the town. A bon fire, 
some soap-box oratory, a march to the chancellor's house, 
or to the capitol were in order. 

The cornerstone of Nebraska Hall was laid on Com- 
mencement Day of 1888 and impressive ceremonies were 



40 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

conducted there by the scientific members of the class of 
1888, after the dignitaries had placed the cornerstone and 
departed. The next building to be constructed was the 
armory, known as Grant Memorial Hall. Then in rapid 
succession came the following: boiler house, library, elec- 
trical laboratory, Mechanic Arts Hall, Memorial Hall an- 
nex, Brace laboratory, Administration Hall, Museum, the 
Temple, engineering building, law college building, Bessey 
Hall, Chemistry Hall and many minor buildings, and new 
buildings now under construction. 

The farm campus of 320 acres was purchased from 
Moses Culver and his wife on June 25, 1874, as the original 
lands located nearer the main campus were found to be 
unsuitable. Until 1918 the old home of the Culvers was 
in use as a dwelling, but the march of building-progress 
called for its removal. Many of the beautiful old trees 
planted by Mr. Culver still adorn the farm campus. In the 
early days the farm was separated from the town by an 
almost unbroken stretch of prairie, so that it was regarded 
as being at a great distance. Agricultural college students, 
living at the farm, rode to the campus in a wagon. These 
students were supposed to work for their board, and to 
absorb agricultural wisdom while they worked. A cartoon 
in the first edition of the Sombrero in 1884 represents them 
as engaging in mumble-ty-peg behind the barn. 

The development at the University farm was greatly 
retarded, and the farm campus received little attention 
until about 1899. It has become the most attractive place 
in the city — which reaches out to, and surrounds it. It is 
connected with the city campus by an eighteen-minute car 
service and may be reached over paved streets. It has 
buildings and improvements to the value of over half a 
million dollars. Hundreds of students attend classes at 
the farm. The original 320 acres have long been inadequate 
for the purposes of the college and school of agriculture and 
the experiment station. Considerable additional land is 
rented, and some additional acres, most of which are at 
some distance from the farm, have been purchased. The 
students of the college of agriculture pursue most of their 



BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS 41 

subjects at the farm campus, but many of them also have 
classes at the city campus. 

Chancellor Benton must be regarded as a prophet, for 
he said in his first Commencement address in June, 1872: 
"In view of what may be developed within the next ten 
years, with new and commodious buildings for law and 
medical schools, and with a building for engineering and 
the mechanic arts, I have sometimes feared that our plans 
have not been sufficiently enlarged, and especially that our 
grounds may become too contracted for our growth." 

While the march of events was not quite as rapid as the 
Chancellor's prediction suggested, it came to pass that even 
the state legislature was convinced that the downtown 
campus was too small. A growing agitation for the removal 
of the entire institution to the farm campus was the sub- 
ject of much fierce debate in two sessions of the legislature. 
The decision in the matter was put to a vote of the people 
in 1915, and the proposed removal was defeated. The legis- 
lature of 1913 made a levy of three-fourths of a mill on 
the grand assessment roll of the state for campus extension 
and for buildings on the two campuses. This levy has been 
made for the past six years and has resulted^in the addition 
of more than six blocks to the city campus, and in the erec- 
tion of six or more new buildings. One of the large resi- 
dences on the new campus has recently been set aside as 
a woman's building, to be used for social purposes — a wel- 
come recognition of the needs of University women. An- 
other residence was converted into an infirmary as a mili- 
tary necessity for the S. A. T. C. The Temple building was 
erected on ground immediately adjacent to the city campus 
in 1906-7 with money given by John D. Rockefeller, and 
by citizens of Nebraska. It is devoted to religious and 
social purposes. 

In addition to the city and farm campuses, the Univer- 
sity has a medical college at Omaha with a well located 
campus and splendid new buildings, an agricultural school 
at Curtis in Frontier county, and experiment sub-stations 
at North Platte, Scottsbluff, and Valentine. 



42 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

Envoi: Old U. Hall — in spite of your Franco-Italian- 
Hoosier architecture, plus the "corduroy effect," in spite 
of all the disadvantages of primitive building which no 
amount of repairing and altering can entirely mitigate, the 
alumni and students, 1871-1919, salute you! Every brick, 
every stone, every worn step and threshold, the old cracked 
bell, the red roof, the useless old tower, with the flag of 
our country flying against the incomparable blueness of 
Nebraska sky — all these are inseparable from our intellect- 
ual and spiritual inheritance. The storied past speaks to 
us from your walls, the lingering memories of youth's 
brightness cluster about you! 

Edna D. Bullock. 



UNDERGRADUATE LIFE IN THE EARLY EIGHTIES 

When I entered the University in 1880, the preparatory 
school was still in existence and it was no uncommon thing 
for students to spend six years on the campus. My parti- 
cipation in undergraduate life lasted until 1886. At the 
first date, the official registration in all departments was 
348. Six years later, the Latin school having been sloughed 
off, the annual enrollment reached 381. 

I saw the University in its first raw stages. While it 
had been in operation eight years when I arrived, the facul- 
ty numbered only seven or eight, and the one red brick 
building in the center of the prairie-grassed campus was 
so much too large for the needs of the classes that parts of 
the third floor and attic were still used as a men's dormitory. 
My introduction to student life was effected at Mrs. Swish- 
er's boarding house just north of the campus, where twelve 
boys were well cared for at $3.50 and $4.00 a week. This 
was about the standard cost of good board during the 
six years. Any number of students cut it in half by board- 
ing in groups or by "batching." A few paid a little 
more. In my day Clem Chase and Dan Wheeler were wide- 



UNDERGRAD UATE LIFE 43 

ly advertised as gilded youths because they boarded at the 
Clifton House down town and must have paid as much as 
five or even six dollars. 

After a student had provided for his basic living, had 
scraped together a few books, and had turned over his 
matriculation fee of five dollars, which had to be paid only 
once, he did not feel uncomfortable if he had nothing left. 
Life in the University was so simple and poverty was so 
common that it seemed a perfectly normal condition. Social 
distractions in the early part of my experience were found 
mostly in the Friday meetings of the literary societies; in 
an occasional play at the old Centennial Opera House and 
in a perfect orgy of church attendance on Sunday. I can 
name student after student who went to two preaching 
services, two Sunday schools, a Y. M. C. A. session, and 
the Red Ribbon club every Sunday, from September till 
June. The young people of the little city were bubbling 
over with social gaiety all the time, but aside from the 
small "town set", the students had no time for frivolity. 
We indeed were a serious bunch of youngsters. We studied 
mathematics, the classics, history, and a little science, and 
then read solid magazine articles for relaxation. I remem- 
ber that I cut my first debating teeth over an article by a 
British writer who undertook to show that morality has 
no scientific basis. At Mrs. Swisher's and later at Mrs. 
Park's on Q street, we curried civilization up one side and 
down another at the dinner table every day, and then gave 
it a few extra wipes on Sunday. Society was so simple that 
George McLane, who received fifty dollars a month for jani- 
toring the University building, was treated as an equal by 
the professors and as a little more than equal by the stu- 
dents. He had more money than the rest of us and wore bet- 
ter clothes, and the fact that he was making himself round 
shouldered carrying hods of coal to fill the base burners 
that stood in each recitation room did not interfere at all 
with his social eligibility. 

Athletics had not appeared on the campus in the early 
eighties. The only all-university interest was the college 
paper, The Hesperian Student,, which was the center of 



44 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

many a brilliant contest. Outside of that, we devoted our 
time to our studies, to any outside work that we may have 
had, and to the interests of the literary societies, with an 
intensity of concentration that I am sure would make a 
present-day professor's eyes stand out in amazement. We 
were everlastingly discussing questions like the tariff, the 
Nicaraguan canal and the immortality of the soul. When 
the suffrage question came to a vote in 1882, we lined up 
on opposite sides and not only said everything that had 
been put forward on the question, but after the amendment 
was beaten got up a respectable riot when the antis started 
to bury a coffin said to contain the remains of Susan B. 
Anthony, only to lose it to the beefier suffs. That near riot 
was on the whole a very satisfactory affair. We had the 
band out, and made a big fire on the dirt road at Eleventh 
and streets and rowed around so much like real students 
that we all felt very much encouraged about our rising col- 
lege spirit. If we could only get a football team and some 
fraternities started we might at last put the University 
on the map ! 

The elective system had not been established in 1880. 
One could not hop from course to course or from class to 
class. As a freshman, I recited at 9 :00 o'clock every morn- 
ing except Saturday in mathematics, at 10 :00 in history and 
at 11 : 00 in languages. No afternoon classes were scheduled. 
With three hours of recitation, we were expected to give 
six hours in preparation. That meant nine hours of steady 
work every day for five days each week. Usually the study- 
ing was done at specified hours. The result was that stu- 
dents systematized their work in a way that is not possible 
in the modern hit or miss elective system. This orderly 
arrangement of time made it possible to do the outside 
work that was regularly done among the more prominent 
students. A man who did not have a horse to curry or a 
church to sweep out, or a newspaper route to carry, felt 
that he could take an extra study or two and thus shorten 
up his course and perhaps spend a term now and then in 
teaching school, in order to acquire a little ready cash. 



UNDERGRAD UATE LIFE 45 

A glance at my old student scrap book shows that a 
steady development took place during the entire six years, 
but that the University was still a small and provincial 
and old fashioned college at the end of this period. Public 
affairs consisted almost exclusively of literary society meet- 
ings, oratorical and debating contests and commencement 
exercises and "exhibitions." Two or three fraternities were 
finally established, leading to the famous fight which cul- 
minated in the fall of 1884 in the action denying member- 
ship in the literary societies to the Greek letter brethren. 
In the forty years in which I have watched the University 
no student battle was fought with greater bitterness or 
with more public spirit or ability than this effort to stem 
the tide of modernity in the social life of the college. It 
resulted in the retirement of the Greeks from the Palladian 
and Union societies and their organization of the Philo- 
docean, where they made good the "barbarian" charge that 
fraternities and literary societies could not flourish with 
an identical membership. 

For a few years after this battle the old fashioned socie- 
ties held their own. During this era the state was growing 
fast. Boys with spending money above their bare necessi- 
ties were no longer rare on the campus. We managed to 
organize a baseball team, to acquire a college yell, to take 
on the elective system of studies, and to start a second 
building, the old chemical laboratory. While everything in 
the state had a forward look in those years, the change to 
modern state university conditions did not begin to come 
in earnest until the close of the decade. In my days we 
were still poor but honest. Our clothes may have been 
patched but they were scrupulously clean. We prided our- 
selves on having true hearts, even if our manners must 
have been frightfully crude. The number of successful 
marriages growing out of the simple social customs of the 
early times is worthy of remark. The "slate" may have 
had something to do with this condition. In each literary 
society a list of the young lady members was made out 
weekly and every man was given an opportunity to sign his 
initials after the one of his choice. This "scratching of 



46 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

the slate" not only insured the young ladies regular escorts 
but broke the youths at an early period to the systematic 
attendance upon the fair sex that naturally leads to life- 
long constancy. No formal balls were held by the students 
at this time and only a little semi-clandestine dancing was 
indulged in at class meetings and other affairs held in 
private houses. Romantic talk was stimulated by the moon- 
light, of course, and yet as the couples moved to and from 
the campus for classes and for the society meetings, an im- 
mense amount of converse on deep and high and earnest 
themes was common. I cannot recall one scandal or the 
suggestion of a scandal in the six years. The sons and 
daughters of the pioneers, some of them fresh from the 
sod houses on the homesteads, were catching their first 
glimpses of the glories of the ancient and the modern world. 
It was an enchanting and inspiring time. There wasn't a 
foot of pavement in two hundred miles and the automobile 
was not even a dream. But the old red brick main building 
was as beautiful as the Parthenon, and street, though 
built of wood and sun-dried bricks, could not have been 
surpassed in attractiveness by the marble palaces of Rome. 
No college can be too young to be infected by student 
mischief and lawlessness. It began here in the revolt 
against military drill and in The Hesperian Student type- 
stealing riots for several years before and after 1880. 
These were political affairs, undertaken with solemn and 
deadly earnestness. This cannot be said of the countless 
orthodox student escapades that marked the whole period, 
most of them silly, but quite devoid of malice. It was in 
the interests of the college paper that we collected a fee 
at the door of the chapel one memorable night and then slid 
down a rope and decamped, leaving an expectant audience 
to fry in its own indignation. The sort of cameraderie 
existing between students and faculty was shown by the 
fact that Chancellor Manatt received a hint not to be pres- 
ent while Professor L. A. Sherman, the ambassador in the 
business, came early to enjoy the anger of the audience, and 
Professor Nicholson, also in the secret, did his laughing 
outside as the members of the troupe swarmed down the 



UNDERGRAD UATE LIFE 47 

rope and oozed away. In the meantime the orchestra faith- 
fully continued to grind out "Many Are the Friends Who 
Are Waiting Tonight" until it was discovered that the 
stage was empty. Happy days, happy days! They didn't 
catch the actors that night and in a day or two it was safe 
to reappear on the campus. 

It is interesting to recall what the boys looked forward 
to after leaving the University in the early eighties — pro- 
fessional life, mainly, it seems to me. School teaching was 
still considered a worthy and attractive profession. The 
very pinnacle of success was a college professorship. Law 
invited many of the more vigorous, and a few of the boys 
were thinking of medicine, business, newspapering, or the 
new occupation of writing life insurance. The ministry 
called a few. Nobody wanted to go back to the farm. Farm 
products were almost given away at this time, and land was 
so cheap and abundant that even in eastern Nebraska it 
sold at from five to ten dollars an acre. So the beginnings 
of the agricultural college were held in contempt. We could 
not see that Nebraska was to become a great horn of plenty, 
smothering the next generation with wealth. A few of the 
boys had begun to pioneer in the sciences, but we had no 
hint of the great prizes that were to come to men like Bion 
J. Arnold, who was then breaking into engineering, or to 
J. G. White, who soon went from an instructorship in the 
University to an electrical business encircling the globe. 
What we were getting then seemed the most beautiful and 
the most desirable things in the world. The habits of in- 
dustry we formed, the affections we nourished," the visions 
we enjoyed, and the memories we cherish, make the pioneers 
of the early eighties refuse to be pitied by students who 
enjoy the splendid facilities of the University at the close 
of the first half century of its history. 

Will Owen Jones. 



48 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



THE LIBRARY 

The statute passed by the Nebraska legislature February 
15, 1869, which provided for the founding of the University 
of Nebraska, contained a clause providing for the establish- 
ment of a library, through the appropriation for that pur- 
pose of certain regularly received University fees. While 
the amount in the beginning was small it was constant, and 
growing with the growth of the school it has been the chief 
source of library income, though for many years added ap- 
propriations from the general University funds have been 
made by the regents. 

The successive catalogs of the University refer to the 
carefully selected collection of books which constitute the 
library, and show its growth. In 1878 there were 2,000 
volumes, in 1882, 4,000, in 1886, 7,000, and by 1890, 12,000 
volumes. The growth from this time onward has been in- 
creasingly rapid. By 1901, 50,000 volumes were recorded, 
in 1907, 75,000, and the accessioning of the 100,000th book 
in 1912 was made a ceremony. Since then the growth has 
averaged over 6,000 volumes a year, so that at the end of 
1918, the library numbers 140,000 volumes. 

The original small library was housed first in one room, 
then in two, in the southeast corner of the second floor of 
University Hall. In 1888 it was moved to the first floor of 
the north wing of the same building, the rooms now occu- 
pied by the department of rhetoric. In the fall of 1895 the 
library moved into its present location, the second floor of 
the then new library building. It had been planned that 
the remainder of this building should be turned over to the 
library as it was needed, but there has been absolutely no 
expansion of space for library use since that time. In 
fact the space for readers has been much decreased, as the 
tables which were originally placed in the alcoves in the 
book room had to be withdrawn in order to make space for 
the new stacks demanded by the increasing number of books. 
For several years students have constantly been turned 
away from the reading room by lack of space to seat them 



THE LIBRARY 49 

and the last possible addition has been made to the stacks. 
It is frequently necessary to shift many shelves of books 
in order to place a few newly-acquired volumes, and tem- 
porary shelving outside of the building is already being 
resorted to. 

The administration of the library divides itself into two 
distinct periods, that preceding and that following 1892. 
In the early days, the direction and management of the 
library was in the hands of a library committee whose chair- 
man performed to some extent the duties of a librarian. 
For the first ten years no regular hours of opening were 
observed and very little use of the library was made by 
students. In the fall of 1878, Dr. George E. Howard re- 
turned to the University as an instructor. The professor 
who was chairman of the library committee was absent on 
leave and Dr. Howard was asked to assume some of his 
duties, among them to take charge of the library. He im- 
mediately opened the library from two to six each after- 
noon. This was very popular with the students. January 
1, 1879, Dr. Howard was made instructor in English and 
history and librarian, with full power of administration 
over the library, though there was still a library committee 
of the faculty. Later the power was again vested in the 
committee, but with Dr. Howard always a member, fre- 
quently as chairman. From 1888 to 1891 Miss Ellen Smith 
was "Registrar and Custodian of the Library," and for 
1891-92 Professor George MacMillan was "Custodian of 
the Library." During this early period all members of the 
faculty carried keys to the library, and Dr. Bessey has told, 
in the Cornhusker for 1908, how it was impossible to secure 
their consent to give up this privilege until Chancellor Can- 
field, after presenting the matter in faculty meeting and 
setting forth the reasons why all keys should be turned in, 
added the information that the lock on the library door 
had just been changed by the University carpenter so the 
keys would be of no further use; and as Dr. Bessey adds, 
"The keys were turned in." There was no catalog of the 
library during these years except a sort of accessions list 
of the books as they were received, and such classification 



50 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

of the books as had been attempted was exceedingly ele- 
mentary. 

In 1892 Chancellor Canfield realizing the part which the 
library should be taking in the development of the Univer- 
sity, and the importance of having it carefully organized 
before its increasing growth should make reorganization 
more difficult, appointed as librarian Miss Mary L. Jones, 
of the class of 1885, who had just completed the two-years' 
course of training in the New York State Library School. 
Miss Jones found the task before her no light one. The 
library was already so large that a classification of the 
books by subject and by some form of a catalog was im- 
perative if the constantly increasing use of the library was 
to be made satisfactory. During the summer of 1892 Miss 
Jones reclassified roughly by the Dewey decimal system a 
large proportion of the books, rearranged them on the 
shelves, and made plans for the card catalog which was 
to follow. During the five years that she remained at the 
head of the library she personally classified and supervised 
the cataloging of nearly all the books she found here upon 
her arrival, in addition to all those purchased during the 
period. She gave several short courses in cataloging in 
order to train assistants who could help in carrying on the 
work, and she started the organization of the library upon 
the lines which it has since followed. 

The University has been very fortunate in its librarians. 
Miss Jones has been followed by three other graduates of 
the New York State Library School who, except for short 
intervals, have been continuously in charge of the library. 
Mr. J. I. Wyer, Jr., and Dr. Walter K. Jewett, each held 
the position of librarian for approximately seven years, 
and Mr. Malcolm G. Wyer has been librarian since 1913. 
Each has brought to the library special gifts of organiza- 
tion, and special knowledge of books that, with the con- 
tinuity of standards provided by the New York State 
Library School as a background, has meant much in its 
development. Miss Jones has since been librarian of the 
Los Angeles public library, of the Bryn Mawr College li- 
brary, and is now assistant librarian of the Los Angeles 



THE LIBRARY 51 

county library. Mr. J. I. Wyer, Jr., is director of the New 
York State Library. Dr. Jewett's term of service was ended 
by his death in 1913. 

From the first the University library has been primarily 
a reference library. Most of the books have been bought 
on the recommendation of professors who were interested 
in securing the best material in print in their own fields. 
Occasionally this has resulted in an extreme specialization, 
the forming of a valuable collection of books on a single 
line while the library might be comparatively weak in the 
other lines and in the more general works of the same sub- 
ject. But these special collections are so extremely valu- 
able, and particularly for research work, that it has been 
felt to be the wisest thing, often, to allow the library to 
develop somewhat unevenly in places, trusting that in the 
future the weaker places may be strengthened. Generally, 
with several professors in a department working on various 
subdivisions of their subject, the library receives requests 
for most books of value in the different lines of work and 
so is building a well-rounded collection of the best material 
on many subjects. To the librarian belongs the part of 
choosing the books that do not fall to any department and 
the general works that are used by all. Often, too, as book 
catalogs and announcements are received by the librarian, 
future requests from professors are foreseen and books are 
ordered to be ready when wanted. 

While the library is, as has been said, primarily a refer- 
ence library built up for the use of the faculty and stu- 
dents of the University in their university work, this state- 
ment must not be taken to mean that there are no books to 
interest the general reader or to tempt him to browse 
among the shelves. Most of the best literature of all the 
world in all ages is here, poetry, drama, fiction and essays ; 
large collections of biography and history; travel and ex- 
ploration ; books on all the sociologic and economic problems 
of the day. Students are prone to confine their college 
reading to the work assigned by their professors, and pro- 
fessors often find little time for books not on their own 
particular subject, so that a certain type of excursive read- 



52 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

ing in the University library has been largely missing, 
greatly to the regret of those who know its wealth of books. 
On the other hand the use of the library as a working 
and reference collection of books has always been most 
gratifying. Many departments make a real laboratory of 
the library. The main part of the students' work in many 
courses in history, philosophy, education, literature, econ- 
omics and sociology is done in the library. In the scientific 
and technical courses large use is also made of the litera- 
ture of these subjects as it is found in the collections of 
books which, in most cases, are placed in departmental 
libraries. The engineering and mathematics books, in the 
Mechanic Arts library, the books on agriculture and all its 
allied subjects, with those on home economics, in the Uni- 
versity Farm library, and the smaller collections on botany 
and zoology, shelved together in Bessey Hall, on chemistry, 
physics, and entomology in small departmental libraries, 
are all extremely valuable and most of them are constantly 
used. The Law library is also separate, occupying the 
whole of the third floor of the law building, and a valuable 
medical collection is being formed at the College of Medi- 
cine in Omaha. In addition to assigned and required read- 
ing, there is a very large use of the library by students in 
preparing papers and debates and in looking up all sorts 
of subjects of momentary or permanent interest, while 
from outside the University come many requests for in- 
formation and assistance. 

Probably few people even in the University itself realize 
the worth of this library to the University and to the state. 
It is the largest and by far the most valuable collection of 
books in Nebraska. The books have been most carefully 
chosen for their value as a working collection, and there 
are few subjects upon which it does not contain good ma- 
terial. The library serves the whole University as does no 
other single department, coming in touch at some point 
with every student and every professor. Much more of 
service that it would like to give, must be withheld in its 
present inadequate quarters and with its small staff of 



THE MILITARY DEPARTMENT 53 

workers, but the foundations have been well laid, the growth 
has been carefully guided, and when the opportunity comes, 
the larger service will be given. 

Nellie Jane Compton. 



THE MILITARY DEPARTMENT 

The outstanding feature in the history of the Military 
Department of the University is, it need hardly be said, 
General Pershing's four years' service as commanding of- 
ficer of the battalion. The personality of the young lieuten- 
ant, then fresh from the Indian wars, found immediate 
expression in a stricter discipline and an infectious profes- 
sional enthusiasm. It cannot be averred that discipline was 
then, nor is it now, a conspicuous quality of Nebraska life. 
Lieutenant Dudley, our first commandant, had provoked a 
downright mutiny by an "arbitrary and unreasonable" in- 
sistence upon the wearing of uniforms at drill! Upon the 
advent of Lieutenant Pershing in 1891, the young men found 
that the nameless tyrannies of his predecessors, Lieutenants 
Dudley, Webster, Townley and Griffith, were but faint 
adumbrations of what they were now facing. But there 
was no mutiny. On the contrary, it was the beginning of 
whatever spontaneous enthusiasm the students have since 
shown in military studies. In 1893, Pershing received his 
bachelor's degree from the University in the College of 
Law. In the same year, the Pershing Rifles were organized 
for voluntary additional drill. They are still in existence, 
destined apparently to remain a permanent part of our 
military organization. It may be said in general that this 
period of Pershing's life, with its profound impression upon 
the student body, foreshadowed upon a small stage his later 
achievements in the great field of the world's history. His 
name became a legendary one among successive generations 
of undergraduates, whose memories are usually so short. 
No one has ever been heard to express surprise at the prom- 



54 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

inence of his later career. The continued residence of his 
family in Lincoln has tended to preserve the affection of 
the community for him and pride in his growing fame to 
a greater degree than is usually possible in so migratory a 
profession as that of arms. 

It would be impossible to mention all the cadet officers 
of Pershing's time who have since attained distinction, and 
it would be invidious to attempt a selected list; but it may 
perhaps be permitted to record in meagre chronicle what 
has recently happened to a very few who are for the mo- 
ment in the public eye. 

Col. W. H. Hayward, '97, in command of the 15th N. Y. 
Infantry (coloured), has received the American D. S. 0., 
the French croix de guerre, and has been nominated a 
Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur. His regiment was under 
fire for one hundred ninety-one days and suffered possibly 
more casualties than any other American regiment. He 
himself was wounded in action. One hundred and fifty 
of his officers and men were awarded the croix de guerre 
and his regimental colours were similarly decorated, being 
one of six American regimental colours thus honoured. 
Professor W. L. Westermann, '94, is in Paris with the 
President's party as member of Col. House's Inquiry and 
expert adviser on Turkey. General Pershing recognized 
him after twenty-three years. Lieutenant Colonel L. V. 
Patch, '98, recently commanded an American regiment in 
action and in addition two batteries of heavy French artil- 
lery. Lest we be accused of favoritism in selecting these 
few from among so many, let us hasten to explain that they 
are merely specimens, as it were, of a greater glory ! Even 
so the worthy citizens of Worms said deprecatingly when 
the old Kaiser praised their proffered wines, "We have bet- 
ter ones." 

While General Pershing's name is the most famous one 
to be connected with the Department, it is but one of many 
to be recalled with pride. Captain Guilfoyle, his successor, 
will long be remembered for a delightful retort, which in 
its combination of chivalry and defiance one likes to think 
might have fallen from the lips of Sir Walter Raleigh in 



THE MILITARY DEPARTMENT 55 

more spacious times. Challenged angrily as to whether he 
had really uttered a derogatory remark as reported by a 
lady, though he could not for the moment fully recall the 
incident, Captain Guilfoyle replied quickly, "Whatever the 
lady said I said I said." The bewildered challenger retired 
in confusion to think it over, and never returned. 

The story of Col. Stotsenburg, who came in 1897, is 
more tragic. Before his first year had passed, the Spanish 
War was upon us and he was in command of the First 
Nebraska regiment. Then occurred a shabby incident over 
which it were better to allow ever kind Oblivion to cast 
her veil, were it not that it involves a lesson of too great 
value to be lost. Loud and shrill outcries were raised by 
the political and bolshevik element in the regiment at Col. 
Stotsenburg's exacting standards of discipline. Outrage- 
ous letters of complaint were written to the newspapers — 
in war time! There were mutterings in the legislature 
leading to an investigation from Washington and to Col. 
Stotsenburg's complete exoneration. Meanwhile the regi- 
ment went into action in the Philippines. The value of 
discipline at once became apparent. Complaints suddenly 
ceased, and the Colonel found himself transformed into a 
hero overnight. In 1899, he fell in action at the head of 
his regiment, leaving a name precious in the military annals 
not only of the University but of the State. 

Few of our commandants are remembered with deeper 
affection than Captain (afterwards Major) Workizer, who 
was in charge from 1905 to 1909. He had an almost boyish 
directness and alertness of manner, and a capacity for en- 
joyment that were most winning. The Workizer Rifles at 
the Farm are a lasting testimony to his activity and popu- 
larity. After leaving the University he was invalided for 
injuries received in the performance of his duty. He was 
utterly devoid of fear. At one time alone he entered the 
hold of a Pacific transport to quell a mutiny among the 
prisoners under his charge, and received a blow from which 
he never fully recovered. He died in 1918, partly of his 
injuries and partly of a broken heart at not being able to 
serve his country in the great crisis for which he had spent 



56 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

his heart in preparing. Sans peur et sans reproche, a more 
fearless and gallant officer never lived, barring none. What 
is West Point's secret, one is impelled to ask, in producing 
such men ? Does it produce them, or does it merely attract 
them? 

It is curious now to recall that almost exactly two years 
ago, in the days immediately preceding our plunge into the 
maelstrom of the Great War, there was a formidable move- 
ment in the legislature to abolish military instruction in 
the University. So belligerent and influential were the 
pacifists of that day that the outcome of the agitation could 
not be foretold. Notwithstanding the loss of Federal 
revenue the abolition would have involved, they seemed to 
have an even chance. 

The agitation was short-lived, but it was not without 
disagreeable echoes on the campus. Undisciplined youths, 
many of whom doubtless have since died gloriously for 
their country, conceived it to be their duty to revile the 
Military Department and to undermine its morale. It was 
a bad quarter of an hour for Captain Parker, whose three 
years' period of service was approaching its close. Never 
were trials less deserved. In truth, they did not last long, 
nor would they be worth recording were it not to chronicle 
a moral victory of discipline and self-control which, to those 
who care for such things, will remain undimmed even in 
the presence of imperishable deeds on the fields of France. 
Not once was Captain Parker betrayed by impatience under 
extreme provocation into saying or doing anything un- 
worthy of his profession which he would afterwards have 
wished unsaid or undone. He was the soul of courtesy and 
of honor. He set the men an example of single-minded 
devotion to duty that was much appreciated, not the least 
because it was wholly unconscious and unintended. In 1817, 
Captain Parker was transferred to Fort Snelling, and he 
is now at Stanford University. His successor was Col. 
Roberts, who has since died. 

The roll of West Pointers who have been among us is 
an imperishable one. They have left behind the delightful 
memories, and, let us hope, something of the best traditions 



ORGANIZATIONS 57 

of the Service. We have not dishonored them in the Great 
War. Of the former members of the battalion who have 
distinguished themselves, I am not permitted to speak. 
Their deeds will be found in another article. But our list 
of commandants would be incomplete without the names 
of Captain Frank Eager, '93, afterwards Colonel of the 
First Nebraska Regiment, U. S. Volunteers, and Captain 
Charles Weeks, '98, now Colonel and chief of the historical 
section of the General Staff. And lastly, we cannot forbear 
a tribute to Major (Dean) 0. V. P. Stout, who has a special 
place in our affections. He has shown that his long interest 
in the battalion was not a mere academic one, and that the 
students' confidence in him for many years was not mis- 
placed. 

Guernsey Jones. 



ORGANIZATIONS 



In the early days of the University, the "literary socie- 
ties" were the chief centers of life outside the class-rooms. 
Their weekly meetings on Friday night had no rival save 
a rare "show" at the old Centennial theatre, or later at the 
old Oliver. The manifold attractions which now compete 
for the presence of the student on a Friday evening were 
non-existent. The literary societies have never lost their 
vitality and they still fill definite niches in college life; but 
neither they nor any other organizations of a single type 
could again have anything like their old-time monopoly. 

The earliest literary society to be organized on the 
campus was the Palladian, founded in the autumn of 1871, 
soon after the University opened. Its purpose, in the quaint 
phraseology of the preamble of its first constitution, was 
"to help build up and perfect the moral and intellectual 
capacities and in like manner the social qualities." Only 
the first and part of the second story of University Hall 
were in use for a time, and the Palladians held their meet- 



58 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

ings on the first floor. The second literary society to be 
established was the Adelphian, which was formed in 1873 
by the secession of some of its members from the Palladian. 
A moving spirit in the secession was George E. Howard, 
now one of the University's most honored professors, and 
a recent president of the American Sociological Associa- 
tion. It is of interest to recall that Professor Howard was 
not only a political and literary leader of his period but 
also a leading athlete, holding various college records in the 
types of athletics then in vogue. On the occasion of the 
quarter-centennial anniversary of the founding of the Uni- 
versity, Professor Howard was called back from Leland 
Stanford university, where he was professor of history, to 
deliver the Charter Day address. 

Both the Palladian and the Adelphian societies were at 
first men's organizations, but in the autumn of 1873 the 
Adelphians admitted women to membership, and the Palla- 
dians followed their example during the next term, with 
"consequent gain," says their chronicler, "in decorum and 
in spirit." The meetings of the Adelphians were held on 
the third floor, which was to be for so many years, until 
the erection of the Temple building, the home of the literary 
societies. The Adelphian society went out of existence in 
1876. In that year it was reorganized, joined by a second 
element seceding from the Palladian, under the name of 
the "University Union." Among those who helped to draft 
the charter organizing the new society was Charles E. 
Magoon, Governor of the Canal Zone, 1905-1906, and Pro- 
visional Governor of Cuba, 1906-1909. At first the new 
society restricted its membership to regular college stu- 
dents, excluding students of the "Prep" (Preparatory) 
school. The eligible members of the Palladian and most 
members of the Adelphian made up its first membership. 
Since few students attended the University who did not en- 
ter by way of the preparatory school, this restriction handi- 
capped the new society and was soon given up. It became 
the custom to buttonhole new students, almost as soon as 
they entered the institution, and to ask them to join one 
or the other literary society. When the stage was reached 



ORGANIZATIONS 59 

where both societies had a membership roll of about eighty, 
a third society, with a membership limitation of fifty, the 
Delian, was launched, in the autumn of 1889. The opening 
sentences of its constitution ran: "We, students of the 
University of Nebraska, believing that the membership of 
the existing literary societies is too large for the best liter- 
ary and social culture, and that the formation of a new 
society is desirable, do hereby organize ourselves into a 
literary society." The Palladian and the Union societies 
occupied at this time the long rooms, since remodeled, at 
the east and west ends respectively of the third floor of 
University Hall. These rooms they furnished themselves, 
buying carpets, chairs, curtains, and rugs, from society dues 
and from voluntary subscriptions. The new Delian society, 
since no room for its sole use was available in the building, 
met at first in the "music room" on the first floor, now 
used by the department of elocution. In 1890, it was granted 
the use of the chapel for its meetings, in those days a large 
hall on the north wing of the second floor, but now parti- 
tioned off into class-rooms for the departments of rhetoric 
and of education. Here the Delian society continued to 
meet until it went out of existence about 1905. It was re- 
established in 1916-17, or rather a new literary society was 
instituted, adopting the same name. 

The programs of the literary societies consisted of 
varied features. Staple were the "essay", the "oration", 
the "recitation", with such musical numbers as were avail- 
able interspersed, and the program closed normally with 
a "debate." Social sessions followed, sometimes varied by 
the serving of "light refreshments", such as doughnuts, 
apples, popcorn, or more rarely, ice cream ; and there were 
promenades through the long corridors. In the '80's and 
'90's, the height of elegance was thought to be attained 
when the more prodigal members went to a local restaurant 
after the program for oysters. The recreation of dancing 
was frowned upon in those days, and was not to be thought 
of after society meetings. Auxiliary organizations which 
played conspicuous roles in the life of the literary societies 
were the P. B. D. C. (Palladian Boys' Debating Club), 



60 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

founded in 1882, and the P. G. D. C. (Palladian Girls' De- 
bating Club), founded in 1884, soon followed by the or- 
ganization of similar societies by the Unions, and later by 
the Delians. 

The old-time literary societies gave to their members 
valuable experience. Xot only did they provide social di- 
version but they gave to the students almost their only 
training in conducting public meetings, in self-government, 
and in acquiring self-possession before an audience. The 
training vrhich they afforded in practical politics assisted 
many a future leader, like A. W. Field. H. H. Wilson, United 
States Congressman Ernest Pollard, Governor George Shel- 
don, Regent E. P. Brown. A glance at old-time topics 
for debate shows that abstract questions were preferred in 
the first period, while more concrete questions gained favor 
later. According to Professor H. W. Caldwell, an early 
::on debated was (the original spelling retained) : "Re- 
solved That the Signs of the Times Indicate that We Are 
Advancing Moraly and Spiritualy." ITTis type of que- 
gave way later to subjects like "The Xegro Question", 
"Foreign Immigration", "The Advisability of Adopting the 
Initiative and Referendum." 

A classic institution of the early literary society was 
the "slate," without which some young women might have 
had many invitations to attend meetings while others might 
have found themselves without escorts. The official "slate- 
bearer" passed about a small book listing the names of the 
girl members, to be duly "scratched" for Friday evening 
be men members. Professor H. H. Wilson sometimes 
tells, when indulging in reminiscences, of a new recruit who 
furnished an example of polite correspondence. Having 
been urged by his professor of rhetoric to write with 
studied exactness, he asked a woman member "for the pleas- 
ure of her company to and from the Union society on next 
Friday evening." Xot to be outdone in exactitude, she ac- 
cepted his proffered escort "for the round trip" On leap- 
years the women members had their turn at carrying and 
"scratching" the slate and at extending invitations. 



ORGANIZATIONS 61 

As the number of students increased and membership 
rolls lengthened, the literary societies became no longer 
open societies but restricted more and more their elections 
to membership. They now afford membership to but a 
small proportion of the students. Following the expansion 
of the University, most of the functions of the literary 
societies inevitably were taken over by a variety of new 
agencies. On the literary side, the old need for the societies 
was replaced by class-room instruction in public speaking, 
in debating, in essay-writing, and in oral expression, while 
old-time "oratory" became extinct. The more serious work 
of the societies was assumed by departmental clubs, lin- 
guistic, literary, scientific, or technical. 

On the social side, to meet the needs of those wishing 
greater social opportunities, or special affiliations, arose 
the system of Greek-letter fraternities. These contrast with 
the literary societies in that their membership is limited 
to one sex. They now play a large part in the undergraduate 
activities of all types. The first men's fraternity to announce 
its entry was Sigma Chi, in January, 1883, followed by Phi 
Delta Theta in December of the same year. The first 
women's organization to enter was Kappa Kappa Gamma 
in 1884, followed by Delta Gamma in 1887. For many years 
after the introduction of the first fraternities there was 
strong rivalry, and what were long spoken of as "frat- 
barb" feuds often added zest to undergraduate politics. At 
one stage members of fraternities were barred from mem- 
bership in the literary societies, and "Greeks" already with- 
in the societies were expelled. This rivalry has long since 
ended, as Greek-letter societies of all types, honorary as 
well as social, have multiplied; and many members of fra- 
ternities are enrolled at the present time as members of 
one, at least, of the literary societies. The two types of 
organizations afford different types of experiences, and 
while the function of the literary societies is now mainly 
social, their "co-educational" character enables them to fill 
a special and permanent place in undergraduate life and 
they continue to flourish. The complaint is sometimes heard 
that there are too many student organizations on the 



62 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

campus. But so large is the number of students that how- 
ever many organizations there are — and they overlap a 
good deal in membership — there are still large tracts of 
students who are not reached and hence are likely to miss 
that executive experience and that training in working with 
others or in having to accommodate themselves to others 
which constitutes the most desirable thing to be had, along- 
side the work of the class-room, in undergraduate life. 

Another conspicuous early organization was the "Sem 
Bot", in full, the Botanical Seminar, formed by enthusiastic 
students under Dr. C. E. Bessey. It was restricted at first 
to men members but afterward admitted women. Promi- 
nent among its early members were H. C. Peterson, now of 
Chicago, Roscoe Pound, now of Harvard, Herbert Webber, 
Professor at the University of California, and Albert F. 
Woods, President of the Maryland Agricultural College. 

In these days when social conventions permit college 
girls to go everywhere together without the "escorts" that 
earlier times deemed imperative, one organization which 
played a conspicuous role for a time in university life may 
seem anomalous. This was the "G. 0. I." or order of "Go 
Out Independents." The members of this organization were 
pioneers in looking forward to the changed conditions of 
the present, and they had the encouragement of Chancellor 
Canfield, who was always forward-looking and anxious to 
promote the welfare of the girl students. The G. 0. I. 
demonstrated that girls could attend football games, evening 
lectures, society programs, and other public functions, with- 
out first having to acquire individual escorts; and their 
stand possibly hastened conditions of the present, when 
college girls seem to feel free to go anywhere or to do any- 
thing, whether singly or in groups. 

In 1883, through the encouragement and enthusiasm of 
Mr. B. L. Paine, a religious organization consisting of six- 
teen young men and nine young ladies was completed. It 
took to itself the name appropriate to the majority of its 
membership and called itself the Young Men's Christian 
Association. In 1884, the young women formed a compan- 



ORGANIZATIONS 63 

ion organization of their own, the Young Women's Chris- 
tian Association. Both organizations have had since then 
a flourishing and unbroken existence, growing in influence 
and in numbers. In the earliest period but three commit- 
tees were appointed, the devotional, the membership, and 
the finance committees. The expansion of the Y. M. C. A. 
in the line of practical activities is shown by its present- 
day conduct of an employment bureau, its publication of a 
students' handbook, and by the varied duties of its secre- 
tary — to say nothing of the roles assumed by it with the 
outbreak of the war. Since the completion of the Temple 
building, the Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A. have been 
permanently housed there, and they have contributed to the 
spiritual and social welfare of many students. 

Among honorary scholarship organizations, the first to 
enter was Phi Beta Kappa, which was granted a charter 
from the national organization in 1896, through efforts 
instituted by Chancellor Canfield. Its list of faculty mem- 
bers has included such men as Professors E. A. Ross, H. B. 
Ward, C. E. Bessey, Roscoe Pound, F. E. Clements, E. B. 
Andrews, E. W. Davis; often it was an enviable privilege 
to hear the discussions at its meetings. Of late years its 
brilliant faculty roll has been thinned by deaths and by 
losses to other institutions. The corresponding scientific 
society, Sigma Xi, entered in 1897. There are now honorary 
scholarship societies in nearly all departmental lines, mem- 
bership in which is based on definite achievement. 

By this time there are too many organizations asso- 
ciated with the life of the University for detailed enumera- 
tion. There are clubs based on nationality, like the Komen- 
sky (Bohemian), or the Tegner (Swedish) ; denominational 
clubs, like the Catholic or the Christian Science clubs ; class 
societies, social organizations; military, athletic, musical, 
and dramatic societies; and there are departmental socie- 
ties, ranging in their interests from linguistics and journal- 
ism to engineering and home economics. Beginning with 
the old centers of undergraduate life, the literary societies, 
which involved small groups of students, there have come 
to be innumerable social centers which involve thousands 



64 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

of students. Their multifarious types and activities are 
surveyed to best advantage in the pages of the students' 
annual, The Cornhusker. The varied interests and the in- 
creasing membership of student organizations at the Uni- 
versity parallel the expansion of the institution as a whole. 

Louise Pound. 



THE ALUMNI 



In 1873 two men went forth from University Hall, the 
first two graduates of the University of Nebraska. Both 
men are living and active today — the one, J. S. Dales, as 
secretary of the board of regents and of the University 
senate, is still devoting his services to his Alma Mater; the 
other, Judge William H. Snell, is a practicing attorney at 
Tacoma, Washington. From two, the roster of alumni has 
grown into the thousands, until today they are scattered 
in all parts of the world and in all lines of activities. 

Some seven thousand men and women as graduates, and 
many more as non-graduates, are doing their bit in the 
world's work the better for their training at the University. 
"By their fruits ye shall know them." The strongest argu- 
ment that can be adduced in support of a state loyal and 
generous to its university is the fact that the leaders among 
its citizenship, whether it be on the farm or in the city, 
very often are University men and women, serving in turn 
the state that has so well served them. 

It is impossible in a short article to pay individual 
tribute to all the men and women who have reflected honor 
on their Alma Mater. Parenthetically, and speaking of men 
and women, it ought to be noted that the first woman gradu- 
ate, Alice May Frost, '76, married one of her classmates, 
George Elliot Howard, thereby, as it were ab initio, setting 
such an example as many another has followed. In truth, 
it is no negligible feature of coeducation, and hence of the 
interest of the alumni life of a coeducational institution, 



THE ALUMNI 65 

that marriages among classmates have been not infrequent, 
and again that the children of such marriages have returned 
in a later generation to continue the life and the traditions 
of an institution which, it is to be hoped, their parents have 
a particular reason for loving. 

Several years ago an alumnus, in his Alumni Day ad- 
dress, in undertaking to recount what the men and women 
who have reflected honor on their Alma Mater are doing in 
the world, apologized for the shortcomings of his account 
in words which the present writer must borrow. "No 
catalogue of names," he said, "no selection of a few, can 
give any adequate idea of the broad and general usefulness 
of our fellow alumni and fellow students within these walls 
to the world." Agreeing with this statement, and advanc- 
ing it as my own caution, I shall none the less attempt to 
record a few names of alumni who eminently represent their 
Alma Mater in the world of men. 

Since the University of Nebraska is a state institution 
I shall mention first those who have remained to serve 
within their state. A one-time governor, George L. Sheldon, 
class of 1892, a United States senator, Elmer J. Burkett, 
'93, three congressmen, the late David H. Mercer, '80, 
Omaha, E. M. Pollard, '93, Nehawka, and J. A. Maguire, 
'98, Lincoln, the present police commissioner of the city of 
Omaha, J. Dean Ringer, '03, scores of members in both 
houses of the state legislatures, and scores of city and coun- 
ty officials, are men all of whom honorably served in public 
life their state and their community. In our public school 
system, in all of its branches, are alumni. We have first 
of all our own chancellor, Dr. Samuel Avery, '92, the first 
alumnus to serve in that capacity. We rejoice that among 
the faculty there are still with us alumni who began more 
than twenty-five years ago to serve their Alma Mater; Dr. 
G. E. Howard, 76 ; Professor H. H. Wilson, 78 ; Professor 
H. W. Caldwell, '80; Professor Laurence Fossler, '81; and 
Dean 0. V. P. Stout, '88. The staffs of our normal schools, 
high schools, city and rural schools, are largely made up 
of men and women who have attended if not graduated from 
the University. 



66 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

But Nebraska is an agricultural state ; and if its highest 
institution of learning did not serve its greatest number of 
constituents there would be just ground for public criticism. 
There have gone back to their farms hundreds of men and 
women who because of their scientific training in the col- 
lege of agriculture and their broadening training in the 
other colleges are today among the best farmers and most 
progressive citizens in their communities. Of these there 
comes first to mind, Regent E. P. Brown, '92, of Davey, 
farmer, leader in various rural movements, and president 
of the board of regents of the University. Prominent among 
the horticulturists of the state is E. M. Pollard, '93, of Ne- 
hawka, owner of the famous Pollard orchards, started by 
his father, the late Isaac Pollard, in 1856. The editor of 
The Nebraska Farmer, sl weekly which has the largest cir- 
culation of any farm paper in the state, is C. W. Pugsley, 
'06, formerly director of the extension service of the college 
of agriculture. Of the many women who are working side 
by side with their husbands on the farm perhaps none is 
more deserving of mention that Mrs. Fred M. Deweese 
(Alice C. Towne, '05) of Hilaire Farm, Dawson. Both Mrs. 
and Mr. Deweese, '02, are workers in many activities. As 
state chairman of the food production department of the 
woman's committee of the State Council of Defense, Mrs. 
Deweese accomplished one of the most constructive pieces 
of war work done in Nebraska. 

But even an agricultural state needs more than its farm- 
ers. And so are found in its newspaper work men like 
Clement Chase, '83, president of the Chase Publishing Com- 
pany, Omaha, Harvey E. Newbranch, '96, editor of the 
Omaha World-Herald, and Will Owen Jones, '86, editor of 
The Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln. In industrial lines 
N. Z. Snell, '82, president of the Mid-West Life Insurance 
Company, Lincoln; Charles F. Schwarz, '96, president of 
the Schwarz Paper Company, Lincoln ; C. Louis Meyer, '07, 
president of the Concrete Engineering Company of Omaha, 
who has patented a system of reinforced concrete floors, 
are but a few of the men who have built up enterprises 
within our state. In the legal profession are men like 



THE ALUMNI 67 

Judge Ernest B. Perry, '99, of Cambridge, recent candidate 
for judge of the supreme court, and Judge Lincoln Frost, 
'86, of Lincoln, a prime mover in the social welfare activi- 
ties of the state. But I realize the danger of trying to do 
justice to the several thousands of men and women who in 
every corner of the big state of Nebraska are quietly yet 
faithfully doing their share, whether it be in the home, on 
the farm, or in public service. 

As the alumni who remained within the state have done 
credit to their University, so likewise have those who have 
ventured forth, whether it be in this country or in other 
lands. And difficult as it seemed to select the men most 
worthy of mention within the state, it is far more difficult 
to do so among those who went elsewhere. For there seems 
to be no country or no line of work in which there are not 
several, if not many, pre-eminent Nebraskans. 

In public service arise names like Charles S. Lobingier, 
'88, Judge of the United States court for China at Shang- 
hai, and Charles S. Allen, '86, former president of the board 
of regents, now a public spirited citizen of the city of San 
Jose, California. In education appear the names of Dean 
Roscoe Pound, '88, of Harvard Law School ; President A. F. 
Woods, '90, of the College of Agriculture, Maryland; and 
Chancellor Edward C. Elliott, '95, of the University of Mon- 
tana. Innumerable are the students of Dr. Bessey who are 
doing noteworthy research along botanical lines — as Dr. 
and Mrs. Frederic E. Clements (Edith Schwartz, '98) of 
the Carnegie Institution of Washington; Dr. P. J. O'Gara, 
'02, of the American Smelting and Refining Company, Salt 
Lake City; C. A. Fisher, '98, consulting geologist and fuel 
engineer of Denver who has just been appointed by the War 
Department one of seven commissioners who are to deter- 
mine the available oil and gas resources of the nation. In 
medicine, Dr. Charles A. Elliott, '95, of Northwestern Uni- 
versity, is a member of a recently appointed commission 
of five men who will devote their scientific knowledge to 
a study of the yellow fever scourge in South America. In 
engineering may be mentioned J. W. McCrosky, '91, recent- 
ly of the Bureau of Enemy Trade, Washington, who for 



68 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

many years was connected with a big construction company 
in London; and W. H. Sawyer, '94, vice-president of the 
E. W. Clark Co., Columbus, Ohio. 

What should be said about the thousands of women 
graduates of the University of Nebraska? Their highest 
contribution is that of home-builder. They are the mothers 
of the many sons and daughters who have come and will 
continue to come to the Alma Mater of their parents. As 
the wives of alumni, their contributions are interwoven 
with those of their husbands. They have followed their 
husbands into the missionary fields of China and Japan. 
They have worked side by side with them in their research 
and their publications; while those who have not trained 
their own sons and daughters, have helped to train others. 
As teachers, social workers, in business, and in the profes- 
sions, their record is a constantly growing one. Dr. Edith 
Abbott, '01, of Chicago, social worker and writer, has a 
national reputation. Her first book, published in 1910, on 
Women in Industry, is a classic on that subject. She is a 
member of the faculty of the Chicago School of Civics and 
Philanthropy and of Chicago University. Willa Cather, 
'95, of New York City, one-time associate editor of 
McClure's Magazine, and author of several highly ranked 
books of fiction, is perhaps our best known alumna in the 
literary field, Leta Stetter Hollingworth, '06, a member of 
the faculty of Teachers College, Columbia University, has 
won distinction alongside her husband, H. L. Hollingworth, 
'06, who is a professor of psychology at Columbia. Grace 
Coppock, '05, executive secretary of the Young Women's 
Christian Association for China, has been an inspiration 
to many other Nebraska women who have entered similar 
fields. 

For the men and women who have passed on but are not 
forgotten no tribute seems adequate acknowledgement of 
their services. The latest loss the alumni suffered was in 
the death of Dr. Harry Kirke Wolfe, '80, head of the de- 
partment of philosophy. Others to be mentioned are Pro- 
fessor George W. Botsford, '84, of Columbia, distinguished 
historian ; Edward J. Robinson, '84, engineer with the Bur- 



THE ALUMNI 69 

lington railroad ; Amos G. Warner, '85, author of American 
Charities, still the standard treatise on that subject; Sarah 
Harris Dorris, '88 ; Julia M. Korsmeyer of the department 
of Romance languages; Dr. Howard T. Ricketts, '94, noted 
physician, a victim of his own typhoid investigations — we 
might go on selecting names from every class. The alumni 
who have given their lives in the great war that has just 
been brought to a close died, as they lived, reflecting honor 
on their Alma Mater. 

As we emerge from the great world conflict into an 
age of peace and reconstruction, the alumni find them- 
selves represented by two men at the peace gatherings at 
Versailles, — General John J. Pershing, '93, Commander-in- 
Chief of the American Expeditionary forces, and Dr. Wil- 
liam Linn Westermann, '94, of the University of Wisconsin, 
historian. 

I realize that I have but barely touched here and there 
the records of the thousands of alumni who represent our 
Alma Mater. To the many deserving, yet unmentioned, 
there still remains the satisfaction of service well done. 
With every alumnus there rests the duty of building up an 
alumni association that will more fully reflect the work ac- 
complished by our great alumni body. 

Annis S. Chaikin, 
Secretary of the Alumni Association. 



70 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COMMUNITY 

The degree to which a university may be an asset to a 
community varies with the size of the town. In some in- 
stances it is completely subordinated, owing to overwhelm- 
ing industrial, commercial, and social interests. Again, in 
a small town, it may dominate the life of the community 
without making any distinct contribution to it. In such a 
case, class consciousness develops within the institution 
which causes a sharp line of cleavage between the towns- 
people and the university group. Faculty and citizens do 
not mingle socially, and often intense dislike for the student 
body springs up, chiefly on account of their pranks, which 
get beyond control through lack of adequate police force. 

The relationship between Lincoln and the University 
has been most happy in this respect. Both were located on 
the open prairie at the edge of civilization, and they have 
grown up together to a prosperous middle age. In 1873, 
the University granted two degrees; in 1910, 343 degrees. 
In 1870, Lincoln was a village of something less than 2,500 
people; in 1910, a careful census gave it a population of 
44,000. Both Lincoln and the University now lack, within 
themselves, the intimate relationships of the early days, but 
the challenge of the commercial and social forces of the 
city is still met by the educational forces of the University. 
Lincoln is more widely known for its schools than for its 
business enterprises, and this tends toward a selective pro- 
cess in its population. Families are drawn to the city to 
educate their children, and teachers and librarians often 
seek employment in Lincoln for the advantages which the 
University offers. 

Citizens and faculty mingle freely in social intercourse, 
while personal contact between the student body and the 
townspeople is increased on account of the lack of dormi- 
tories. Instead of being segregated within their own group, 
the students are scattered over the city, — many in their 
own homes, some in homes temporarily established for the 
period of their college residence, others with friends or 



THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COMMUNITY 71 

relatives, and many in private homes where only two or 
three roomers are kept. Although this system has its dis- 
advantages, it has its positive value in keeping students in 
touch with normal community life, — the environment for 
which they are fitting themselves by their college experi- 
ences. The fact that many students in the University work 
their way through school is an added means of bringing 
students into contact with community life. 

In the early days, when the social and recreational life 
of the city was much more simple than it is now, the literary 
societies of the University were an important factor. Their 
programs, more serious than they are today, were adver- 
tised in the newspapers and the public was invited to at- 
tend. Many townspeople were regularly present and con- 
tributed, chiefly in the way of music, to the evening's 
entertainment. 

The development of art and music has been stimulated 
in the community by the presence of the University; while 
institutions such as the annual art exhibit, which depend 
for their permanent financial support upon a large body of 
citizens, could not be maintained easily in a small town 
even though it had a large university. 

One of the earliest definite efforts of the school to make 
its contribution to the solution of community problems was 
the establishment of the University Settlement during the 
school year, 1895-1896. It was known as the Graham Tay- 
lor House, in honor of the founder of Chicago Commons, 
who came to Lincoln in that year to help in starting the 
project. The House was located, during the greater part 
of its existence, at Eighth and X streets, in the foreign 
district in Northwest Lincoln. The board of control was 
made up of faculty members; the residents and assistants 
were students, or wives of University professors. In 1900, 
the Settlement was moved to Twentieth and N streets, and 
some years later, the property was turned over to the Char- 
ity Organization Society. In spite of the short life of the 
institution, it registered its influence in the broadening and 
democratizing of the students who served in it, some of 



72 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

whom have since made well-known contributions in social 
service. 

The community has benefited by the assistance of uni- 
versity instructors in a wide range of activities. From 
early days to the present, the board of education of the 
city has usually numbered faculty members upon its staff. 
In the early period, the shaping of the general policy of 
public school education, and the building program of recent 
years have been due in no small part to them. The library 
board and various departments of the city government, as 
the engineering department, the park board and the water 
board, have made use of their expert services. They have 
been active in the City Improvement and Social Welfare 
societies, in anti-tuberculosis and other public health work, 
while enthusiastic support has been given to the prohibi- 
tion and suffrage movements. University professors have 
sponsored legislation relating to child labor, mothers' pen- 
sions, women in industry, and juvenile courts; while the 
city charter and problems of local government have re- 
ceived their earnest attention. The community draws 
largely upon the university faculty for help in forming 
public opinion on social questions, and in contributing to 
the cultural life by lectures before parent-teacher associa- 
tions and the great variety of men's and women's clubs in 
the city. In addition to such specific contributions, there 
can be little question that the presence of the University has 
imparted a more serious tone to the life and thought of 
the community, accounting in part for the relative freedom 
of the city from social extravagances. 

The community, in turn, through its various agencies, 
furnishes a laboratory for training students in social and 
civic leadership. No doubt the history of the student vote, 
in city politics, would make an interesting, and not always 
savory, tale ; for it, together with the foreign vote, has been 
the uncertain element, which could be handled more or less 
en 'masse, and hence, in the "old days", was an important 
consideration. Anxious politicians always advised that it 
"be watched"; it was frequently subjected to challenge at 
the polls ; a supreme court decision has been rendered upon 



THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COMMUNITY 73 

it; and it became the subject of state legislation when its 
stand in favor of prohibition helped to place Lincoln in the 
dry column. 

Not only has the city furnished practice in politics and 
chance for observation of courts and legislatures, but oppor- 
tunity for social work as well. Investigations of a great 
variety of social problems, ranging in importance from 
class and seminar papers to doctoral theses, have been based 
on local data. Students carry on their field work in the 
social sciences through numerous community agencies — 
charitable, penal, educational, industrial, recreational, 
health, and religious. 

To a great degree the city recognizes the responsibility 
laid upon it through the presence of a large student body. 
There is a conspicuous absence of any desire to exploit it 
on the part of the city at large. Its tastes are catered to 
— perhaps too largely but at least indulgently — in amuse- 
ments ; and the program of the churches is shaped with the 
students in mind. Their presence has always furnished a 
talking point for civic reform, and on their account various 
agencies which might contribute to their demoralization 
have undoubtedly been more easily disposed of, or have 
received stricter supervision. 

The University justifies its existence best by the service 
it renders. This consists primarily in the training for lead- 
ership ; but its second service is the practical help given by 
men and women of broad study to the problems of the com- 
munity. More and more must this latter function be exer- 
cised, and the community served be enlarged from the 
locality in which the University is situated to include every 
town and open country district in the state. 

Hattie Plum Williams. 



74 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



THE REGENTS 

The act of the legislature approved February 15, 1869, 
which established "The University of Nebraska" provided 
that 

The general government of the university shall be vested in a 
board of regents, which shall consist of the governor, the superin- 
tendent of public instruction, the chancellor of the university, all 
of whom shall be members by virtue of their offices, and three per- 
sons from each judicial district, who shall be appointed by the 
legislature in joint session. 

The governor was ex officio president of the board. The 
term of service then fixed at six years has never been 
changed. This plan was doubtless adapted from Iowa, just 
as the first territorial assembly had adopted the Iowa civil 
and criminal code. The English deprecatingly admit that 
they "muddled through" the war. The records disclose 
that the experimentation in government of our state uni- 
versities is scarcely entitled to the English faint praise. It 
has merely muddled along. The case of our Iowa ex- 
amplar is typical — though in some other states the fumbling 
has been more frequent and effusive. 

The act of the first general assembly, passed February 
25, 1847, which established the State University of Iowa, 
provided that it should be governed and managed by fifteen 
trustees, to be appointed by the first general assembly for 
a term of six years, the superintendent of public instruction 
to be the presiding officer of the board. After an unfor- 
tunate experiment, permitted by the constitution of 1857, 
with a "Board of Education" elected by the people, but 
having incongruous legislative powers, an act of March 21, 
1864, provided for a board of nine regents, of which the 
governor was president ex officio, the president of the uni- 
versity a member ex officio, and the other seven members 
were chosen by the general assembly, as before. This 
method of choosing the regents continued until the separate 
governing body was abolished by the act of 1909, which 
placed the university, the College of Agriculture and 



THE REGENTS 75 

Mechanical Arts (at Ames) , and the normal school at Cedar 
Rapids under the government of a "State Board of Educa- 
tion" consisting of nine members, appointed by the gover- 
nor with the consent of two-thirds of the senate for a term 
of six years. 

Of the five states which started their universities with 
governing boards chosen by their respective legislatures, 
namely, Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Nebraska, 
Iowa alone brought that method into the present period of 
university development. I have examined the experiments 
of thirteen states, besides Nebraska, with the governing 
boards of their universities, but space permits only a 
skeleton outline of the main changes they have made. The 
University of Michigan began, in 1837, with the appointive 
system, but the constitution of 1850 fixed the elective 
method beyond practicable recall. Indiana University, 
established in 1838, was governed by a board of trustees 
named by the legislature. Until 1855 vacancies were filled 
by the board itself; then, until 1891, by the state board of 
education. Since 1891 the board of education has ap- 
pointed five trustees and the alumni resident in the state 
have appointed three of their own number. The governing 
board of the University of Missouri was appointed from 
1839 till 1868 by the legislature ; since then it has been ap- 
pointed by the governor and the senate. The regents of 
the University of Wisconsin were elected by the legislature 
from 1848 to 1866 ; since then they have been appointed by 
the governor alone. The regents of the University of Min- 
nesota have been appointed, from 1851 to the present time, 
by the governor and the senate. At the University of Kan- 
sas, the regents were appointed from 1864 to 1913 by the 
governor and the senate; then all educational institutions 
were placed under the control of a "State Board of Admin- 
istration, " consisting of three members appointed by the 
governor and the senate and the governor as ex officio mem- 
ber and chairman; in 1917 this method was spread over 
all state institutions. At the University of Illinois, the re- 
gents were appointed from 1867 to 1887 by the governor 
and the senate; since then they have been elected by pop- 



76 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

ular vote. The University of California began (1868) with 
the complex system of six ex officio regents, eight appointed 
by the governor and senate for sixteen years and as many 
more chosen by the fourteen for a like long term, now there 
are twenty-four members, eight ex officio and sixteen ap- 
pointed by the governor. * The regents of Ohio State Uni- 
versity, founded in 1878, have always been appointed by 
the governor and the senate. The University of South Da- 
kota, first called the University of the Territory of Dakota, 
1883, then the University of Dakota, 1887, discarding 
earlier methods, is now governed by "Regents of Educa- 
tion" appointed by the governor and the senate to have 
jurisdiction over all educational institutions. The Univer- 
sity of North Dakota, 1883, is governed by a board ap- 
pointed by the governor and senate. The University of 
Colorado, 1876, by provision of the constitution, has a gov- 
erning board elected by the people. 

The act to establish the University of Nebraska au- 
thorized the governor to appoint the members of the first 
board of regents, and he announced his choice as follows: 
From the first judicial district, Rev. John C. Elliott, Otoe 
county, two years; Robert W. Furnas, of Nemaha, four 
years; Rev. D. R. Dungan, Pawnee, six years; from the 
second judicial district, Rev. John B. Maxfield of Cass, two 
years; Abel B. Fuller, of Saunders, four years; Champion 
S. Chase, of Douglas, six years ; from the third judicial dis- 
trict, William B. Dale, of Platte, two years; Rev. William 
G. Olinger, of Burt, four years ; Dr. Fyfield H. Longley, of 
Washington, six years. 

The board was organized at a meeting held in Lincoln 
on June 3, 1869, when August F. Harvey, uncommonly in- 
telligent and virile, was elected secretary and John L. Mc- 
Connell treasurer. Mr. Harvey was a protege of the capi- 
tal commissioners, functioning as surveyor of the site of 
Lincoln, and as editor of the peripatetic Statesman, he was 
a stout defender of the fiercely assaulted acts of his patrons. 
Mr. McConnell afterward became a well known merchant 
in Lincoln. At this meeting, the regents approved the 
plans and specifications for the first building which had 



THE REGENTS 77 

been adopted by the building commissioners, who were iden- 
tical with the capital commissioners. At the second meet- 
ing, begun September 22, 1869, the regents attended the 
ceremonies of laying the corner stone of the building on 
September 23; at the third meeting, begun December 22, 
1870, Uriah Bruner, of Cuming county, was chosen regent 
in place of Dale, and Rev. Henry T. Davis, of Lincoln, sec- 
retary in place of Harvey, both of the original incumbents 
having removed from the state. At the meeting of the 
board held in December, 1875, J. Stuart Dales was elected 
secretary to succeed Mr. Davis, and he has continuously 
held the office to the present time. 

Aside from the pan-sectarian aspect of their aggregate, 
the members of the first board of regents were pretty well 
assorted. The governors choice of clergymen for four of 
the nine appointive members — perhaps five, for it is said 
that Fuller had taken Episcopalian orders — and the elec- 
tion by the board itself of a reverend chancellor and a rev- 
erend secretary gave the infant institution a distinctively 
clerical cast. This virtual stamping of the principal state 
school as protege and ward of the church was doubtless 
due in part to the still surviving belief or concession that 
the inculcation of religion was the most important part of 
even public education. Probably, however, the politic gov- 
ernor was mainly intent on procuring the active co-opera- 
tion of the churches in the difficult and even doubtful experi- 
ment upon which the state, whose people were chiefly ex- 
perienced in a sense of poverty, was entering. 

Rev. John C. Elliott was pastor of the Presbyterian 
church at Nebraska City from 1866 to 1869, and he is still 
living — at Seville, Ohio. Delineation of the character 
and career of Robert W. Furnas is accessible to the not 
numerous citizens of the state who are unfamiliar with 
them. At the time of his appointment, Rev. David Roberts 
Dungan was a resident of Lincoln and had been engaged 
for about five years in missionary work in Nebraska for the 
sect called the Church of Christ. After 1874 he was for 
many years a member of the faculty of Drake University, 
at Des Moines; and he was president of Cotner University 



78 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

for six years — from 1890. He now lives at Glendale, Cali- 
fornia, where he preaches occasionally. Rev. John B. Max- 
field joined the Nebraska conference of the Methodist 
Episcopal church in 1861, and he was actively engaged in 
the service of his sect, as preacher, teacher, and presiding 
elder until near the year of his death in 1900. Forcefulness 
was his characteristic quality. He held the charge at Platts- 
mouth at the time of his appointment. Abel B. Fuller set- 
tled at Ashland, then in Cass county, in 1863, where he kept 
a general merchandise store until 1867, when he became 
land agent for the Union Pacific and Burlington and Mis- 
souri River railroad companies and was so employed when 
he was appointed regent. He was a member of the House 
of Representatives of the twelfth and last territorial legis- 
lative assembly, in 1867, and of the same house of the sec- 
ond state legislature in the same year. The session of the 
territorial assembly ended February 18 and that of the 
state legislature began February 20. The members of the 
territorial assembly were chosen at the regular election, 
under the law of the territory, on October 9, 1866. The 
pending process of admitting the territory to statehood 
being then under arrest by President Johnson, provisional 
members of a state legislature were elected at the same 
time. Moreover, the Republicans nominated the same men 
for members of legislative bodies under the actual terri- 
torial and the prospective state regime, and this body of 
dual parts, sitting as a state legislature immediately follow- 
ing its regular territorial session, accepted the negro suf- 
frage condition precedent to statehood imposed by the con- 
gress. 

Three members of the board, Governor Butler, Furnas, 
soon to be governor (the ambitious political aspirations of 
both soon to be cut down, never to rise again) , and Champ- 
ion S. Chase, belonged to the class commonly called profes- 
sional politicians; and it is but doing Elder Maxfield justice 
to observe that he also seems to have shone in that class 
with native distinction. In his public aspect and activities 
Regent Chase was a ubiquitous and picturesque personage, 
and forceful withal. He was a paymaster in the Union 



THE REGENTS 79 

army, the first state's attorney — under the first constitution 
an extra-constitutional office — 1867-68; mayor of Omaha 
for three terms. In 1878-79 there was a very persistent 
and alleged corrupt attempt by the city council to adopt the 
Holly water works system, and Mayor Chase's repeated veto 
of the ordinances which were passed for that purpose won 
and doubtless deserved general praise. 

In 1865, William B. Dale came from the state of New 
York to Columbus, Nebraska, where he engaged in the sale 
of lumber and in storekeeping. At the third meeting of 
the board of regents, begun December 22, 1870, according 
to a provision of the act for establishing the University 
which authorized the board to fill vacancies occurring when 
the legislature was not in session, Uriah Bruner, of Cum- 
ing county, was appointed a successor to Mr. Dale for the 
reason, as alleged in the record, that he had removed from 
the state. It appears, however, that he remained a resident 
of Columbus for many years after this occurrence. Mr. 
Bruner had settled at West Point in 1856 and in 1869 be- 
came the first receiver of the land office there. Rev. Wil- 
liam G. Olinger came with his parents from Virginia to 
Tekamah in 1855. On October 24, 1862, the boy of 19 was 
mustered as a private in company B Second Regiment Ne- 
braska Cavalry, of which Furnas, his colleague on the 
board of regents, was colonel. He served until September 
4, 1863. He was afterward treasurer of Burt county and a 
member of the House of Representatives in the sixth legis- 
lature, of 1875. When he was appointed a regent he was 
pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Tekamah, for 
which he personally provided the meeting house. He sub- 
sequently became a preacher in the Congregational church, 
in Oregon. His neighbors of Tekamah speak in high praise 
of his spirit and character. Dr. Fyfield H. Longley was a 
member of the first board of trustees of Blair, in 1869, and 
was a reputable physician there. 

Rev. Allen R. Benton became ex officio regent by his 
election as first chancellor of the university, which occurred 
at the fourth meeting of the board on January 6, 1871. The 
two other ex officio regents were Governor David Butler 



80 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

and Samuel DeWitt Beals, superintendent of public instruc- 
tion. The first constitution of the state made no provision 
for the office of superintendent of public instruction, but 
"An Act to Establish a system of Public Instruction for the 
State of Nebraska," passed on the same day as the act to 
establish the state university, created the office and au- 
thorized the governor to appoint a superintendent whose 
tenure should continue until January 1, 1871, when he 
would be succeeded by the person chosen at the regular 
election of 1870. Accordingly, on the next day after the 
passage of the act, the governor appointed S. D. Beals, who 
thereupon became regent. He contested for nomination for 
the office in the Republican state convention of 1870, but 
was defeated by John Murray McKenzie, who therefore 
succeeded to both offices. Subsequently Mr. Beals had a 
long career as a teacher in the public schools of Omaha. 

On February 28, 1871, the two houses of the legislature, 
in joint convention, elected D wight J. McCann, of Otoe 
county, in place of Elliott; Maxfield (still credited to Cass 
county) and Bruner, each as his own successor; all for the 
full term of six years from March 1, 1871. Similarly, on 
the 29th of January, 1873, the legislature elected William 
D. Scott, of Rulo, Richardson county; James W. Savage, of 
Omaha; and William Adair, of Dakota City, regents for 
the full term from March 1, 1873. 

On the 16th day of February, 1875, the legislature 
passed a joint resolution declaring that the office of regent 
from the first judicial district was vacant because McCann, 
the nominal incumbent, had removed from the state and 
had not attended any meeting of the board during the last 
eighteen months. On the same day and in like manner, the 
place to which Maxfield had been elected, from the second 
district, was declared vacant because he had moved to the 
first district — from Plattsmouth to Beatrice. On the same 
day the legislature elected Edgar M. Hungerford, of the Or- 
leans Sentinel, Harlan county, in the first district, in Mc- 
Cann's place, and Samuel J. Tuttle, of Lincoln, Lancaster 
county, in the second district, in Maxfield's place. Charles 
A. Holmes, of Tecumseh, Johnson county, in the first dis- 



THE REGENTS 81 

trict, was chosen for the full term, in place of Dungan; 
Benjamin H. Barrows, editor of the Omaha Republican and 
a member of the House of Representatives, was chosen for 
the full term for the second district, to succeed Champion 
S. Chase, who received five votes against thirty-nine for 
Barrows; and Dr, Alexander Bear, of Norfolk, Madison 
county, for the full term from the third district, to succeed 
Dr. Longley, who had removed from Blair in 1872 to be- 
come the first receiver of the United States land office at 
North Platte, where he subsequently practiced his profes- 
sion until he died, about eight years ago. But Lincoln county 
was in the third district, so that he remained regent until 
the end of his term. Dr. Longley must have been a clever 
politician, for he managed to hold lucrative political offices 
while he was preparing and waiting for his long and suc- 
cessful professional career. 

McCann was president of the Nebraska City National 
Bank and otherwise prominent ; but he wrote compromising 
political letters, and, drifting to Wyoming, then a Mecca for 
superfluous politicians of Nebraska, he crippled his career 
by getting caught in fraudulent transactions in the United 
States revenue service. Maxfield aspired to re-election in 
1875, but he also unwarily wrote a letter to McConnell, 
treasurer of the university, admonishing him that "we 
ought to have two or three thousand in Griggs and Webb's 
bank here [Beatrice] at the opening of the session. If so 
they cannot move the money into the state treasury during 
the session. We will then have a man at court. This will 
guarantee our continuance." For "there will not be a more 
influential member in the senate" — than Griggs, who was 
slated for its president. It appears that the letter guaran- 
teed Maxfield's discontinuance; and McConnelPs office was 
abolished by that legislature. 

Hungerford was found dead in his bed on the morning 
of January 3, 1876, three days before the beginning of his 
elective term. By common appraisement the young man — 
of only twenty-seven years — was of a high type of both 
character and accomplishment. On January 7, Governor 
Garber appointed Rev. Lebbius Fifield, of Kearney, to fill 



82 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

the vacancy, and at the regular election of that year he was 
chosen for the remainder of Hungerford's term. He was 
elected for another term in 1881. Judge Tuttle remembers 
him as a man of fine character and spirit; but he was the 
last clergyman on the board. The inevitable radical reac- 
tion against the ecclesiastic regime, which culminated in 
1882, stood pat, unwisely as I think. 

Considering the character of the pioneer population and 
the paucity of numbers to choose from, the legislatures were 
clearly more discriminating than the people at large have 
been in their choice of regents. Of those well adapted to 
the delicate and difficult task of establishing the university, 
Dungan, Fuller, Chase, Longley, Savage, Hungerford, Bar- 
rows, Bear, and Tuttle deserve mention. All were marked 
by more than ordinary character, education, and intelli- 
gence. That by the legislative plan two democrats could be 
chosen and that two such democrats as Savage and Bear 
were chosen is highly to its credit. I knew them, Horatio, 
— both "of most excellent fancy." Judge Savage was a man 
of that peculiar cast which inspires, holds, and deserves 
public confidence. Moreover, at the time in question his 
profession had not become for the most part the mere hand- 
maid of business, and, in some sort, it still lived up to its 
reputation as the learned profession, as Judge Savage did. 
Dr. Bear was the Virginian gentleman. Speech came 
mended from his tongue with the soft touch and melodious 
cadence of the South. He took part of the college course 
of the University of Virginia and his medical degree, in 
1860, at the University of Maryland. He had begun to prac- 
tice when he was caught in the vortex of the war serving 
— on the Confederate side of course — the full four years, 
three of them as surgeon — prime preparation for his very 
successful medical career, which he resumed in Nebraska 
in 1866, settling permanently at Norfolk in 1872. Not long 
ago he retired with a handsome competence to Richmond, 
Virginia, his boyhood home. 

Judge Tuttle, now working out, hale and hearty, his 
fiftieth year of continuous practice at the Lincoln bar, had 
been college bred in Michigan and was encouraged for the 



THE REGENTS 83 

Nebraska experiment by the success of the University of 
Michigan, the only state university then fairly on its feet. 
His observation of the ecclesiastical episode in Michigan 
prepared him for its Nebraska run, and he was so tempered 
as to be able to treat it fairly. Judge Tuttle drew the four- 
year term under the new constitution, 1876-89. His influ- 
ence in the board was strong and wholesome, especially as 
its president, 1876-77. 

The present constitution of Nebraska, which was 
adopted at the general election of 1875, provided that "the 
general government of the University of Nebraska shall, 
under the direction of the legislature, be vested in a board 
of six regents .... who shall be elected by the electors of the 
state at large" for a term of six years, except that the re- 
gents chosen at the next succeeding election — of 1875 — 
should be classified by lot so that the tenure of two of them 
should be two years, of two others four years, and of two 
others six years. Anticipating the adoption of the constitu- 
tion at the same election, the Republicans nominated a par- 
tisan ticket, comprising four of the incumbents — Adair, 
Holmes, Hungerford, and Tuttle — and Joseph W. Gannett, 
of Douglas county and Seth P. Mobley, of Hall. Dr. Bear 
met inevitable defeat with his companions on the democratic 
ticket, and thereafter none but republicans were permitted 
to participate in the government of this principal educa- 
tional institution until, in 1891, Edwin A. Hadley, of Gree- 
ley county, slipped in on the Independent People's ticket. By 
1900 "fusionists" dominated the board, and they thereupon 
elected E. Benjamin Andrews chancellor by a strict party 
vote, four to two! The nominally nonpartisan method of 
electing regents provided by the act of 1917 may measur- 
ably improve their fitness, but they will still be commonly 
either self-nominated or, rather worse, nominated by co- 
teries. In the year 1890, President Thomas C. Chamberlain, 
of the University of Wisconsin, gave the charter-day ad- 
dress at Nebraska. In discussing with him the affairs of 
the two institutions, I said my chief regret was that our 
regents were not appointed as in Wisconsin, and he 
promptly replied that his chief regret was that they were 



84 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

not elected in Wisconsin as in Nebraska. But the steady- 
adherence to the appointive plan in ten of the fourteen 
states cited is strong evidence that the appointive method 
is not as objectionable as the elective. The superstitious 
tendency to "put God in the constitution" has caused great 
inconvenience and often worse harm. A plan of choosing 
regents is not a principle but a mere method, which should 
be left subject to legislative change; and I do not doubt 
that if the elective method had not been mistakenly cast in 
the constitutions of Michigan, Nebraska, and Colorado, it 
would long ago have been changed into harmony with the 
appointive method of the ten states I have named. 

Yet this is not a momentous matter; for as the univer- 
sities grow and become more complex, their control, both 
as to initiative and management, tends to fall more and 
more into the hands of the specialists — the chief executive 
and the faculty. The regents' functions, in detail, are 
chiefly of a regulatory sort, and in general, mediatorial be- 
tween specialists and the people. They are handy adjuncts. 
On occasion, their very differentiation prompts them to open 
the blinders of the specialists to a broader outlook. On the 
other hand, an omniscient, or single-minded, or self-suf- 
ficient board of regents would surely be embarrassing and 
might be positively troublesome. 

It is a corollary that the regents should not be of one 
kind — as at least five out of our present six are — but that 
their pristine variety should be restored. Doubt obscures the 
educational outlook as chaos confronts political order. Says 
Professor Coe, of the Badger State university: "For this 
period of remarkable outer achievement has been also a 
period of skepticism and even of despair. We have fallen 
of late into a deep discontent with the college." And thus 
Professor C'anby, of Yale: "I am not writing a treatise on 
education after the war, for the excellent reason that 
neither I nor any one else knows the terms upon which it 
will be conducted." But the melting blow-pipe of Profes- 
sor Veblen's A Memorandum of the Conduct of Universi- 
ties by Business Men pales other ineffectual fires. 



PUBLICATIONS 85 

In some important aspects at least, our present "Red- 
blood" board is stronger than any of its predecessors. But, 
the Red-blood "neither looks back nor looks ahead. He 
lives in present action. The Red-blood sees nothing; but 
the Mollycoddle sees through everything." Though "all the 
building is done by Red-bloods," yet "the whole structure 
of civilization rests on foundations laid by Mollycoddles," 
and "in the long run the Red-blood does what the Molly- 
coddle tells him." Says the strenuous Oswald — -in Joan 
and Peter — "Don't you know that education is building up 
an imagination? Everybody knows that." A temerarious 
critic of the supreme American mollycoddle settles it in a 
sentence: "And if Lincoln had been a good executive, we 
should have had no Lincoln." 

Albert Watkins. 



PUBLICATIONS 



Except for official bulletins or catalogues, the earliest 
regular publication issuing from the campus was The 
Hesperian Student, established about 1871 or 1872. The 
paper was managed entirely by students, but received a 
little financial aid from the regents. The first editors of 
the paper lodged on the attic-like top floor of the building, 
as did the janitor; and they helped to keep up the fires in 
the stoves by which the building was heated. The contents 
of The Hesperian were varied. It ran a few original serial 
stories, and contained an article on "The Beautiful in Art," 
and one entitled "Nature and Art and Intellect." As a 
specimen of style, the following gem, concerning the gradu- 
ates of 1877, unearthed from a local column by Mr. J. A. 
Barrett, in 1894, may be quoted : 

The hour when these young men departed from her fostering 
care, was one of deep interest and earnest solicitude, as well as 
pride, to their alma mater in her young maternity. An hour of 
joy and pride, because her progeny, rejoicing in the full vigor, 
elasticity, lofty aspiration and hope of intelligent, cultured young 



86 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

manhood, were now about to enter the broad arena of life's con- 
test, with the peculiar devices she has taught emblazoned upon 
their shields, as her representatives, to labor and achieve in her 
name. 

The following, also gleaned by Mr. Barrett, was from 
a later column and concerns the high school : 

In taste and beautiful arrangement the exercises were not 
excelled by any entertainment of the university. The graduating 
class consisted of three beautiful and talented young ladies and 

one young gentleman. The productions of the ladies 

were surprisingly excellent in thought, and couched in splendidly 
beautiful language. Every sentence seemed to sparkle with word- 
gems and sentences of pearls. The address of the young gentleman 
, on "The Manias of the Age," was a worthy produc- 
tion. It lacked the glitter and music with which the young ladies 
adorned their thoughts, but we liked it equally as well. He showed 
the elements of manly thought in grappling with the knotty prac- 
tical problems of the day, and evinced a conception of the follies 
and fantasies of the age. 

In the early nineties the management of The Hesperian 
became largely a matter of school politics. Alumni will 
recall the rather ornate cover designed by Miss Sarah Wool 
Moore of the art department. It represented a huge sun- 
flower supported by two "Hesperian students." Across the 
face of the sunflower ran a ribbon bearing the letters 
"Hesperian Student." The typography of the paper became 
so careless that it was not unusual for the paper to appear 
with all the s's, or some other letters, in italics. These 
strange freaks of the printer became such a joke among the 
students that one day a fake edition of The Hesperian ap- 
peared. It was made up largely of the most absurd items 
from the real Hesperian. The following is an extract from 
the mock Hesperian and is said to be almost a reproduction 
of an article in a real issue : 

Hair-Breadth Escape of J. H. Hooper 

At the close of last term a brutal and cowardly attack was made 
upon J. n. Hooper by a band of nine sneaking thugs and assassius who 
attempted to bind and gag him; boubt less with the intention of robbing 
him and leaving him a Mutilated corpse by the roadside. But 
Hooper proved too much for them. Summoning all his resolution he 
hurlad the villians from him— knocking down five and dragging the 



PUBLICATIONS 87 

other seven after him. Mr. Hooper's Heroic resistance, one MAN 
against seventeen so paralyzed the nineteen despejadoas that nothing 
more is to be feared from Them. 

In 1892 Willa Cather became a literary editor of The 
Hesperian, and a few years later editor-in-chief ; and it was 
under her vigorous leadership that the paper reached its 
maximum of excellence. The following passage is excerpted 
from the quarter-centennial number and suggests by its 
virile dash of composition Miss Cather's authorship : 

Along in '84 and '85 THE HESPERIAN had a literary column 
in which it felt in duty bound to review current literature. In 
reading this column we learned among other new and startling 
things that The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, 
that it is very immoral and should be carefully kept from the young. 
Furthermore, we learned that War and Peace was a novel by 
Count Tolstoi, and that it was very good, though somewhat volumin- 
ous. Of Sordello the literary editor merely says that it is a poem 
by Robert Browning. It is a case in which silence speaks, appar- 
ently. In the local column we find a casual mention that Bismarck 
has been ill for a few days, and that Tennyson dined at Windsor 
Castle last week, and that the Queen of Spain has a new dress. In 
the editorial columns we find inspiring quotations from Faust, 
Hamlet, and Lucile. In the files we scanned we found thirteen 
essays on the inevitable Thomas Carlyle. It is a great temptation 
to reprint some of the literary productions of the olden times, for 
some of them are very good stuff indeed, but after all these years 
it would be cruel to treat our amiable librarian to her essay on 
the Founders of the Modern English Race, or to thrust upon the 
managing editor of The State Journal his own essay on Mahomet, 
and it would be little short of inhuman cruelty to expose Mr. 
Saunders by republishing the awful poetry he used to write under 
the graceful nom de plume of "Ivy." 

From time to time there were rival publications. A 
class paper, The Sophomorian, containing literary and 
journalistic matter, was conducted in 1889-90 by the enter- 
prise of one student. In the two succeeding years, the same 
student, associated with a few classmates, published suc- 
cessfully The Lasso, "for the promotion of college spirit." 
There was a design of a cowboy on the front, and for some 
reason all of its early numbers were in black covers. 

The Nebraskan, founded about 1894, was a rival of The 
Hesperian. This paper was nicknamed "Riley's Rag" after 



88 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

one of its editors, "Rag Riley" (Frank T. Riley of Kansas 
City). Since his day the college paper has always been 
called familiarly "The Rag." The most ambitious and the 
most ephemeral of student publications was The University 
Monitor, an attempt at serious journalism which rose and 
passed in 1896. On January 13, 1901, The Daily Nebraskan 
was organized. It was a consolidation of the two weekly 
papers, The Hesperian and The Nebraskan, and the literary 
monthly connected with the latter, The Scarlet and Cream. 
The first issue of The Daily Nebraskan came out in Septem- 
ber, 1901. The editorship of the paper was at first elective 
by the student body, but it is now an official publication 
having financial backing from the university. The staff 
editors are selected by the faculty publication board. 

As to humorous publications, the earliest, according to 
tradition, was The Button Buster, issued in the early '80's 
by members of the Palladian society. This paper went 
through several issues at irregular intervals. Though copies 
have failed of preservation, a few gems illustrating its type 
of humor have been handed down. 

From a Soph's Album 

"May your life glide down 

The stream of time 
Like a bobbed-tailed chicken 

On a sweet potato vine." 

Our Favorite 

"She's a tall, slim girl without bang or curl 

But garbed in becoming apparel. 
She can give you askance a withering glance, 

As sour as a vinegar barrel." 

A high-class humorous paper, The Arrow-Head, was 
published about 1899-1901 with Herbert Johnson, now a 
celebrated cartoonist, as managing editor. This publica- 
tion showed unusual originality for a student production. 
Awgwan, the present student comic paper, was established 
in 1912-13, largely through the efforts of Ralph Northrup. 
Its drawings, and cover designs furnish an avenue of ex- 



PUBLICATIONS 89 

pression for campus artists and cartoonists. The paper 
started as a bi-monthly but during the period of the war 
was reduced to five or six issues a year. 

The first annual, The Sombrero, appeared in 1884. 
Copies are not now to be found. The second volume was is- 
sued in 1892, and the third in 1894. This last contained a 
cut of the Sombrero board of 1884. Underneath the cut is 
the legend "The docile donkey, recently found anchored in 
a recitation room on the third floor is an honorary member 
of this board. He refused to compromise himself by appear- 
ing in the engraving." It is said that the donkey referred 
to was a quaint little animal which the professor of French 
used to ride to school. 

Numbers of The Sombrero continued to be issued until 
1907, when the name was changed to The Cornhusker. The 
Cornhusker is an amalgamation of the junior annual and 
the senior class-books which used to be issued by the seniors 
alongside the junior annuals. Classic among the senior 
books were that of 1905 with Alice Town Deweese as editor 
and moving spirit, and that of 1906 with Leta Stetter 
Hollingworth as a leading editor and contributor. The uni- 
versity annual is now an official or semi-official publication 
of the souvenir type, issued under the supervision and 
censorship of the publication board. 

On the literary or non- journalistic side, it is to be re- 
gretted that there is now no avenue of expression for the 
University students. News gatherers and humorists have 
opportunities but not so the writers proper. The Nebraska 
Literary Magazine, a quarterly, ran in 1895-96, under the 
encouragement of the department of rhetoric and of the 
English Club of the University ; and, beginning in February, 
1898, The Kiote, a monthly publication of the English Club, 
went through three or four volumes. The interest in writ- 
ing that led to the publication of these magazines was, for 
the most part, due to the stimulus of Instructor Herbert 
Bates, and later to that of Professor Clark Fisher Ansley, 
of the department of rhetoric. Formerly there was much 
of a literary nature in the Sombrero. This material now 



90 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

seems to be crowded out by restrictions of space, interest 
in the social organizations, or for other reasons. And, the 
school is now so big that it is difficult to "stalk" talent that 
does not come forward of itself. Opportunity or personal 
popularity are likely to bring staff positions, where genius 
for writing may remain buried save for some lucky chance. 
Some of the former contributors to University publica- 
tions, all members of the English Club, who have since be- 
come distinguished, are Keene Abott of Omaha; Harvey 
Newbranch, editor of the Omaha World-Herald; Willa 
Cather, the novelist; Norris Huse, who was lately called to 
New York City for newspaper work; H. B. Alexander; 
D. N. Lehmer, now of the University of California; A. S. 
Johnson, sociologist, novelist, and one of the editors of The 
New Republic; Edith Abbott of Chicago, sociologist and 
author ; George C. Shedd, novelist ; Sara Birchall, now with 
Vogue, author of a book of verse ; Ruth Bryan Owen ; Mar- 
garet Lynn, essayist and short story writer; Leonard H. 
Robbins, of The Newark News; Leta Stetter Hollingworth 
of Columbia University; J. A. Sargent, a well known 
engineer; Emory R. Buckner, attorney; Fred Ballard, the 
playwright; Louise Pound; and Edwin Ford Piper, author 
of a newly published book of verse entitled Barbed-Wire and 
Other Poems. 

For faculty and graduate publications, the University 
compares to great advantage with similar state institutions. 
The oldest publication, University Studies, includes studies 
of all kinds. It gained perhaps its greatest recognition by 
its publication of some of Professor C. W. Wallace's Shakes- 
pearian researches. The University Journal, a journalistic 
and educational bulletin, is edited by A. A. Reed, and it 
alternates with The Alumni Journal, edited by the alumni 
secretary, Miss Annis Chaiken. The publications of The 
Nebraska State Historical Society and of the Nebraska 
Academy of Sciences are issued from the campus. There 
are many departmental series, like Studies from the Zoo- 
logical Laboratory, established by Professor H. B. Ward; 
Reports of the Botanical Survey of Nebraska, founded by 
Dr. C. E. Bessey; Reports of the Nebraska Geological Sur- 



PUBLICATIONS 91 

vey, edited by Professor E. H. Barbour, and the recently- 
established Studies in Language, Literature, and Criticism, 
edited by Louise Pound, H. B. Alexander, and F. B. San- 
ford. Finally deserving of mention is The Mid-West Quar- 
terly, established in 1913-14 during the administration of 
Chancellor Avery, with Professor P. H. Frye as editor. 
According to its prospectus it was "established by the 
University of Nebraska in the belief that there exists 
in this country a quantity of excellent writing for which 
there is no adequate medium of publication. While exact 
scholarship, the discovery and verification of fact, has re- 
ceived any amount of encouragement and stimulation, the 
cultivation of general ideas, the free play of intelligence, 
what Matthew Arnold would broadly call criticism, has met 
of late years with neglect if not with actual disfavor . . 
. . it is the hope of enlarging the opportunities of those 
who are interested in this manifestation of mental activity, 
irrespective of territorial limitations, which has led to the 
establishment of The Mid-West Quarterly." The Quarterly 
has contained contributions from writers and scholars of 
note, and has received much commendation from savants in 
many parts of the United States. 

Olivia Pound. 



92 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



ATHLETICS 

No brief survey of the history of athletics at Nebraska 
can possibly seem adequate. Unrecorded history after all 
is much more interesting than the statistics of victories and 
defeats. If a composite picture could be drawn which would 
mirror the individual heroisms, then only could we appre- 
ciate the records which the University of Nebraska has 
made on the courts, diamond, track, field, and gridiron since 
embarking in intercollegiate contests in the late '80's and 
early '90's. 

The students of the University confined themselves in 
the early days to intra-mural athletics. It has been said 
that if Professor G. E. Howard, who was among the first 
students, had matriculated at a later time he would have 
been one of the most famous of our all-round athletes. 
Though one would scarcely picture Professor Caldwell as 
a plunging fullback, it is well known that he was a baseball 
player of a great deal of ability. 

Football 

Football has been the major sport since its very begin- 
ning. From a desire to beat Doane and thus win the state 
championship, the goal of our first football teams, we have 
passed to the ambition revealed in the schedule for 1919, 
which includes Iowa, Minnesota, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, 
Kansas, Ames, Missouri, and Syracuse. In 1890 with the 
aid of the football fans from among the faculty, the first 
football team was organized. The great rival for 1890 and 
1891 was Doane; but in 1892 gridiron warriors tackled 
Kansas and were defeated by the score of 12 to 10. Their 
only other game that season was with Iowa, which resulted 
in a tie. The next year a professional coach was employed 
in the person of an old Michigan star by the name of Craw- 
ford, who piloted Nebraska through the season without a 
defeat. The 1894 team was the first team which was recog- 
nized as the champion of the Missouri Valley colleges. 



ATHLETICS 93 

From 1894 to 1900 Nebraska did not win another cham- 
pionship, although she was always represented by credit- 
able teams which lost by nip and tuck battles^ Following 
Crawford, Thomas, also of Michigan, Robinson of Brown, 
Yost of Lafayette, and Branch of Williams were employed 
as professional coaches, until the advent of "Bummy" Booth 
in 1900. From the beginning of his career as football coach 
until he left after the season of 1905, Nebraska had an un- 
broken string of championships of the Missouri Valley. In 
1902 our opponents were held scoreless and we gained 
national recognition by defeating, for the first time, the 
strong Minnesota team. In 1903 Nebraska was again un- 
defeated. In 1904 and 1905, though we were defeated by 
Western Conference schools, the Missouri Valley colleges 
succumbed to our attack. 

Foster of Dartmouth succeeded Booth in 1906, and 
though the team played well, it lost to Kansas, Minnesota, 
and Chicago. "King" Cole of Michigan as the football 
mentor in 1907, won another Missouri Valley championship. 
In * 1908 and 1909, we lost the championship to Kansas. 
However, in "King's" last year, 1910, we came to our own 
by going through the season with only a single defeat and 
that at the hands of Minnesota. 

The preceding year the faculty representatives of the 
Missouri Valley Conference laid down the rule that coaches 
must henceforth be members of the faculty and elected for 
the entire year. This rule went into effect for the year 1911- 
12. Ewald O. Stiehm was our first all-year coach. He was 
the product of Wisconsin University, with several years of 
successful minor college coaching experience. His first foot- 
ball team, though falling a victim to Minnesota, made a 
clean sweep of the Missouri Valley and tied the University 
of Michigan in the last game of the season, after clearly 
outplaying its antagonist during the greater part of the 
game. In 1912 and 1913 the Cornhuskers won all games 
except that with Minnesota. 

After a series of defeats at the hands of Minnesota since 
1902, Nebraska triumphed at last in 1914, by a score of 
7 to 0, on the home field in a most exciting contest. The 



94 



UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



season was a victorious one throughout and Nebraska's was 
classed as one of the strong teams of the country. The 
1902 and the 1915 Cornhusker football teams were pointed 
out as the two greatest teams in our history. Rutherford 
and Chamberlain as a scoring machine, with other stars 
that would have shone on any ordinary team, made the 
1915 warriors the most spectacular iin their performances 
of perhaps all our elevens. They defeated their strongest 
opponents by large scores, with the exception of Notre Dame 
on Thanksgiving Day, where the margin was only one 
point. Rutherford's blocking, with Chamberlain's marvel- 
ous dodging, kept the largest number of people that ever 
witnessed a football game on Nebraska Field continually on 
their feet. 

Dr. E. J. Stewart became director of athletics in the fall 
of 1916. His first team lost the championship to Kansas, 
though it made a very creditable record. In 1917 another 
Missouri Valley championship was annexed, making a total 
of fifteen years of championship out of a possible twenty- 
seven. W. G. Kline acted as coach of the 1918 football team 
in the absence of Director Stewart. It was a team made up 
of the members of the Students' Army Training Corps, with 
no eligibility rules and playing only hit and miss games 
throughout the season. Most of the veterans of former 
years had gone to war and as a consequence 1918 was not 
a successful season, though we defeated Kansas by a good 
score and we can all recall the time when that was the only 
essential to success. 

A roll call of the captains of the years reveals the names 
of men who perhaps during their college days were the 
best known men on the campus. 



1891 


E. E. Mockett 


1898 


W. C. Melford 


1892 


E. E. Mockett 


1899 


C. E. Williams 


1893 


G. H. Dern 


1900 


F. H. Brew 


1894 


E. 0. Pace 


1901 


John Westover 


1895 


W. W. Wilson 


1902 


John Westover 


1896 


0. B. Thorpe 


1903 


J. R. Bender 


1897 


G. C. Shedd 


1904 


M. A. Benedict 







ATHLETICS 95 


1905 


C. T. Borg 


1913 


L. R. Purdy 


1906 


Glen Mason 


1914 


Victor Halligan 


1907 


John Weller 


1915 


R. B. Rutherford 


1908 


J. B. Harvey 


1916 


H. H. Corey 


1909 


0. A. Beltzer 


1917 


Edson Shaw 


1910 


John Temple 


1918 


*Ernest Hubka 


1911 


S. V. Shonka 


1919 


Paul Dobson, Captain 


1912 


E. E. Frank 


Baseball 


Elect. 



Baseball is the oldest of Nebraska's sports. From the 
very beginning of the University, baseball contests were 
held between the various classes. An intercollegiate game 
with Doane in 1882 is the first outside contest recorded. 
Nebraska was victor by a decisive score, probably on ac- 
count of the fact that Frederick Shepard, now a judge of 
the district court of Lancaster County, had mastered the 
curve ball and had the opposing batsmen absolutely at his 
mercy. 

A great many creditable teams have represented Ne- 
braska. Especially during the late '90's and early 1900's 
did we have excellent baseball teams, some of whose stars 
were Eddie Gordon, J. R. Bender, J. M. Bell, George Fenton, 
Robert Carroll. The coming of Western League Base- 
ball in 1905 brought a decline of interest. The baseball 
teams began to be controlled by university factions, and 
though they made extended trips to the East and South, 
baseball became a liability from the manager's point of 
view. No more than a handful of spectators would be on 
hand to witness an important battle. In 1911 the sport was 
abandoned. 

Since that time, baseball has had several revivals but 
only a few games were played each season. Coach Stewart 
is now planning a real resurrection of baseball, to take place 
just as soon as conditions within the University return to 



*Roscoe Rhodes, Captain Elect for 1918, was killed in action 
in France. 



96 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

their pre-war basis. Much interesting information could be 
collected on the history of baseball at Nebraska, if time and 
space permitted. 

Track Athletics 

Though contests within the University had been held 
in track events almost since the beginning, the late '80's 
and early '90's record some track meets with Doane College. 
The first meet with Kansas was in 1897 and resulted in a 
victory for Nebraska. After Dr. R. G. Clapp came to Ne- 
braska in 1902, Nebraska began to develop track stars of 
the first magnitude, though, as the accompanying records 
show, even before that time there were many notable per- 
formances. Nebraska has been first among Missouri Val- 
ley colleges in the annual conference meet but two times 
since its organization in 1907, but has won sixty percent 
of her dual meets with Kansas. She has lost only three 
meets in twelve years of competition with Minnesota and 
has divided honors with Ames. Louis R. Anderson, Ne- 
braska's greatest miler, was a member of the last Olympic 
team, which represented the United States at the Olympic 
Games in Stockholm, Sweden. 

A comparison of the track records of 1896-97 with those 
today shows the development of the sport in the last twenty- 
five years. 

Cross Country 

Cross country running was introduced by Dr. R. G. 
Clapp, and for six years after the competition of our first 
team in 1904, Nebraska was the Cornell of the West, win- 
ning four out of six championships in competition against 
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Chicago, Ohio, Ames, Iowa, and other 
middle western schools. Because of a lack of attention, 
cross country running has not flourished since 1910 and 
it was finally abandoned in 1915. Plans are now under 
way for a revival. 



ATHLETICS 



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98 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

Tennis 

The tennis association of the University of Nebraska 
was organized in 1890, with Charles D. Chandler as first 
president. Two courts, soon increased to three, were laid 
out directly west of University Hall. Later they were 
moved to the site of the present Law building. The first 
holder of the University championship was Miss Louise 
Pound, who was on the team which played Doane College 
in the early '90's. She was Nebraska's representative for 
two years in singles, and with Emory C. Hardy made up 
our team in doubles. The tennis association has had many 
excellent players on its membership roll. Earl E. Farns- 
worth, champion in 1902, became state champion in singles, 
and with I. M. Raymond, Jr., won the state championship 
in doubles. He was collegiate champion of Kansas, Mis- 
souri, and Nebraska in the fall of 1903. H. V. Failor, '02, 
became a tri-state champion. Other men holding 'varsity 
firsts in singles or doubles were Arthur Scribner, Fred 
Wright, Ralph Cassady, '05, and C. M. Mathewson, '06. In 
1905, competitions with Iowa and Minnesota were held. 

The tennis teams were never under the jurisdiction of 
the athletic department until 1912. The association ran 
as an independent association and made its own engage- 
ments for dual meets. In 1909, R. E. Weaverling and Harry 
Smith were our representatives against Kansas. In 1911 
the first Missouri Valley conference meet was held, and 
Nebraska was victorious. John T. Tate won first place in 
singles, and with M. F. Goodbody as partner, won the 
doubles. Guy Williams, '14, was a leading player till his 
graduation, and so was E. F. Meyer. Last should be men- 
tioned Lieutenant Harry Ellis, '16, recently wounded in the 
Argonne in France, who beside being college champion was 
three times a state champion in doubles, and Lieutenant 
Edward Geeson, who won the title of state champion in 
1917. 

In the fall of 1917 the game was abandoned at the Uni- 
versity because of war conditions, but it will be resumed 



ATHLETICS 99 

this spring. With the opening of several additional courts 
east of the athletic field, the training of a larger squad will 
be possible. 

Basketball 

Basketball was introduced into the University in the 
winter of 1895-96 by Dr. Clark, who was at that time di- 
rector of the gymnasium. In those days there were seven 
men on a team. The very earliest games were played with 
the Y. M. C. A. and other local organizations. Basketball 
has grown greatly in popular favor until it is now one of 
the most popular of the sports. Nebraska succeeded in the 
early years in winning most of the games played with 
other Missouri Valley colleges. In the early 1900 , s, Ne- 
braska began to play with the Western Conference colleges 
and as a whole was generally on the short end of the score. 
Dr. Clapp became director of the gymnasium and professor 
of physical education in 1902. Basketball flourished under 
his guidance, and, though still losing to Western Conference 
teams, our boys made excellent records in the Missouri 
Valley competitions. Our small court in Grant Memorial 
Hall always proved a handicap, when our basketball teams 
journeyed to the larger courts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, or 
Chicago. After "Jumbo" Stiehm took charge of the team, 
we won two successive Missouri Valley championships and 
in 1915 gave Minnesota a double drubbing. The lack of 
a suitable gymnasium is alone responsible for the fact that 
Nebraska has not made a record in basketball as good as 
that made in football. 

The largest High School basketball tournament in 
America is held under the auspices of the University of 
Nebraska. As many as 130 teams have competed in a 
single tournament. As a consequence, good material is 
very plentiful and as soon as a good gymnasium is supplied, 
we will take our rightful place in basketball among the col- 
leges of the middle west. 



100 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

Other Minor Sports 

Gymnastics have been maintained since the early 1900's. 
Our teams have been among the winners consistently, com- 
peting against all the largest colleges of the Western Con- 
ference. Wrestling was introduced in 1908 and meets with 
Ames and Iowa have been held in addition to the Western 
Conference meet. In 1916, our wrestlers succeeded in 
carrying off premier honors at the conference meet in 
Minnesota. There has not been a year in which we have not 
won at least one of the weights, even though our teams did 
not always carry off first honors. 

Physical Equipment 

Until 1908, the northwest corner of the old campus al- 
ways served as an athletic field. It was either as hard as 
a pavement or was a sea of mud, and it is to be wondered 
how early football warriors ever survived a season. In 
1908 a movement was started by the athletic board, headed 
by Graduate Manager Earl Eager, to acquire a block and 
one-half just north of the old campus, bordering on Tenth 
and T streets. This was acquired but was not ready for 
use until 1909-10, and in the meantime the Antelope base- 
ball park was used for football and the state fair grounds 
track for track and field athletics. The present athletic 
field is as inadequate now as the old one was in 1907. 

When Grant Memorial Hall was built in 1887-8, it was 
one of the best gymnasiums in the Missouri Valley. Though 
it has outlived its early reputation, some very excellent 
basketball and gymnastic teams have been trained within 
its four walls. 

The Name "Cornhusker" 

The name "Cornhusker" was first applied to Nebraska 
athletic teams by Charles S. Sherman, then the sporting 
editor of The Nebraska State Journal. Before that time 
our athletes were known as Bug-Eaters, Tree-Planters, or 



ATHLETICS 101 

Nebraskans. Mr. Sherman's suggestion met with a great 
deal of favor on the campus and Albert Watkins, Jr., then 
prominent in college journalism, took up the idea and firm- 
ly established the name. 

Jack Best 

No history of Nebraska athletics would be half com- 
plete without some tribute to the service of our beloved 
trainer, Jack Best. For almost forty years, he has been 
rubbing the sore spots out of stiff muscles, giving solace 
to discouraged candidates for athletic honors, and putting 
fight and the spirit of fair play into our athletes. His pleas- 
ant smile, whole-hearted sympathy, and unswerving loyalty 
have been the inspiration of the wearers of the Scarlet and 
the Cream. Jack will live in our hearts as long as there is 
life within us. The following couplets which are often sung 
on the campus nowadays will be sung by our great grand- 
children. 

Old Jack Best from England came 
Best in heart, Best in name. 
Always there with a hearty laugh 
"Don't forget to turn off the bath." 

Inter-collegiate athletics have justified themselves at 
Nebraska. The critics say that competitive athletics de- 
velop only the few, while a proper system should develop 
the many. Around the Cornhusker athletes has grown that 
academic patriotism known as "college spirit" without which 
no large university can have an attractive college life. Isn't 
it true that a Cornhusker becomes the hero of every Ne- 
braska boy as soon as he begins to read the sporting page, 
and that he becomes zealous to develop his physique in order 
to emulate the deeds of his hero? 

Guy E. Reed. 



102 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

THE UNIVERSITY AND THE WAR 

When the call to the colors came in the great world war, 
the University of Nebraska "went over the top" in every 
form of service she might possibly render. Faculty, alumni, 
students, buildings, and equipment, all were at the disposal 
of the United States government. 

Immediately upon the declaration of war more than a 
thousand young men withdrew for military, naval, or in- 
dustrial service. And these numbers have been steadily 
growing with records still incomplete. The 2,300 stars upon 
the University service flag bear silent witness to her men, 
young and old, who entered camp and trench, ready if need 
be to die for their country. Forty-four of these stars are 
already known to have turned to gold, twenty-six of them 
among the American Expeditionary Forces. They repre- 
sent privates and officers ; a Lieutenant Colonel; an army 
chaplain ; a Red Cross nurse ; a physician ; men killed in the 
thick of action ; and men who gave their lives in the train- 
ing camps. 

Faculty as well as students joined the colors. Fifty 
members of the faculty and administrative officers entered 
military service, while others were called to Washington for 
important services in their specialized lines. Chancellor 
Avery was called to Washington because of his special 
knowledge of chemistry and was later commissioned a 
major in the chemical warfare service. Dean 0. V. P. Stout 
of the college of engineering and Dean Irving Cutter of the 
college of medicine were granted leaves of absence by the 
University when commissioned a major and captain, re- 
spectively. Major L. W. Chase of the ordnance depart- 
ment, engaged in responsible work in the crating of gun 
carriages ; Major Stokes of the medical corps in the organi- 
zation of Base Hospital Unit 49 ; Major F. M. Fling in the 
historical section; Major Sturdevant of the Base Hospital 
at Camp Cody; Major Amos Thomas of the eighty-eighth 
division serving overseas ; Captains P. M. Buck, A. R. Davis, 
C. J, Frankforter, and C. W. Taylor, are but a few of the 
faculty members who are serving as officers. 



THE UNIVERSITY AND THE WAR 103 

The department of physics was almost depleted of its 
faculty for a time, the head of the department and a 
number of his associates being called to Washington for 
special service. Prof. M. M. Fogg as state director for 
the department of public information developed a corps of 
four-minute men, many of them former University men, 
who attracted national attention because of their number 
and effectiveness. And even our famous football players 
gave up their coach, Dr. E. J. Stewart, who enlisted as a 
physical director under the Y. M. C. A. Other members 
of the faculty co-operated with the food and fuel adminis- 
trators. In fact there was no member of the faculty or of 
the administrative force who did not lend his services in 
some form or another. 

Not only the faculty but the entire University plant was 
put at the disposal of the United States government. A 
national army training school was opened at Nebraska in 
July, 1918, which with one or two exceptions, handled a 
larger number of soldiers than any other state institution. 
This was under the supervision of Prof. 0. J. Ferguson, 
acting dean of the college of engineering, who had as his 
assistants a number of the faculty. And when, at the be- 
ginning of the school year, the government decided to make 
use of the educational institutions of the country, the Uni- 
versity of Nebraska opened its doors to a students' army 
training corps which numbered 1,730 men. All this was 
in addition to the special war courses, including a school 
in radio telegraphy, which were established at the very be- 
ginning of the war. 

The military department of the University furnished 
continually a large quota of men both from its alumni and 
its student body for the officers' training camps. But many 
men preferred to enlist as privates and to play their humble 
part in the great army of democratization. The fact that 
General Pershing, in command of the American Expedition- 
ary Forces, was a former commandant at the' University 
and also an alumnus drew many of his former boys to him. 
Six hundred of the 2,300 stars upon the service flag are 
known to represent men in France or other countries 



104 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

abroad; while a large number of overseas service men as 
yet have not been recorded. 

Base Hospital No. 49, now serving overseas, was organ- 
ized under the auspices of the college of medicine, and is 
manned largely both in its officers and its privates by Uni- 
versity men. Two University women also are in its corps. 
There are many Nebraska men in the medical and ambu- 
lance corps of both army and navy. Many members of the 
faculty of the college of medicine are serving as commis- 
sioned officers in the medical corps. 

The women, too, of the University of Nebraska have 
contributed their share. Miss Alice Howell and Miss 
Blanche Grant of the faculty have gone overseas as canteen 
workers. An alumna, Miss Helen Sargent, gave up her 
life as a Red Cross nurse. Alumnae and students Tiave 
furnished a large number of workers in the food conserva- 
tion work, Red Cross, Y. W. C. A., canteen service, student 
nurses, dietitians, reconstruction workers, and other im- 
portant branches of service. 

Campus life itself was transformed by the war. The 
student body in large measure gave up their social life in 
order to contribute their money to war funds and their 
time to war work. In every war drive the University went 
over the top. The department of athletics alone contributed 
$7,000 to Red Cross. Both men and women worked in the 
Red Cross rooms where surgical dressings were made daily. 
Members of the faculty added to their already heavy 
schedules of class-room work when members of their depart- 
ment were called into service and granted leaves of absence. 
They went out over the state freely to give lectures upon the 
meaning and significance of the war. They served on 
numerous and varied war committees. 

Much more might be said of the University and its part 
in the war. Those who have come in contact with its 
faculty, alumni, and student body, know of their share. 
After the armistice was signed three men represented the 
University of Nebraska at the peace conferences at Ver- 
sailles — General John J. Pershing, Major F. M. Fling, and 



THE UNIVERSITY TODAY 105 

Professor W. L. Westermann. To the many friends of the 
University this is one of their proudest moments. As in 
war so in peace the University of Nebraska is playing no 
small part. 

Annis S. Chaikin. 



THE UNIVERSITY TODAY 

The fiftieth birthday of the University of Nebraska is a 
kind of family holiday — not quite a day of rest, as it has 
proved, but one of a good deal of good feeling. The external 
relations of the University are peculiarly happy at the mo- 
ment, for its record in the war just ended has been such 
as to bring it the touch of pride necessary to a pleasant 
sense of self-satisfaction. And its internal relations are 
more than usually harmonious. We may be forgiven, there- 
fore, for a little more complacency than might be appro- 
priate at another time and outside the family, and a little 
more frankness of self-examination than would be palatable 
from outsiders. 

The moment ought to be thoughtful as well as festive, 
for the University may be felt to have come of age at its 
fiftieth year. It is no longer an experiment. It has gone 
through its time of gangling growth, has had its periods 
of stagnation and its spurts of expansion, and has emerged 
into maturity with the complete organization of the typical 
American university. For the typical American university 
is the state university. Whether it is a finer product than 
the endowed or the denominational school is a matter of 
opinion, but it has the distinction of having arisen out of 
the direct impulse of the people themselves, and of having 
expanded, college by college and department by depart- 
ment, in response to their immediate demand. Its support 
has been not the inertia of an endowment, but the appro- 
priation moment by moment of what they have wanted to 
afford for that kind of thing, and its attendance has been 



106 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

the measure of how much that kind of thing has been 
wanted. Those who have come have been the gauge, not 
of a generalized ideal of what a state should do for its youth, 
but of the individual and actual desire for those particular 
services. The vitality of the state university is thus demon- 
strated by its continued existence and continued growth. 
By such a test the University of Nebraska — we may par- 
donably boast — has shown a vigor that leaves as its only 
problem the one of how to contain and direct it. 

The University has, indeed, repeatedly outgrown its own 
house. Its colleges are now spread over three campuses. 
The newest of these, the one for the College of Medicine, 
at Omaha, is on a hillside not quite at the edge of town, 
overlooking a broad valley and the open prairies beyond. 
By situation it is open to indefinite expansion. Already it 
has a large, well equipped hospital, a laboratory building 
of modern style and equipment, and another laboratory 
building under construction. The campus of the College of 
Agriculture, the Farm, is, on the whole, the pride of the 
institution. Its half-section of land at the outskirts of the 
city, with its thirty-two buildings, its well kept lawns, and 
its model fields, is the show place of Lincoln. Further build- 
ing is in progress there also. The city campus, where 
more than two-thirds of the five thousand students go to 
their classes, is not so fortunate in its site or equipment. 
But though at the moment the uninitiated visitor will gain 
an impression of chaos from the jumble of buildings there 
and the diversity of architecture, yet there is a plan slowly 
emerging, of which the newer buildings — Bessey Hall, 
Chemistry Hall, the Social Science Building, and the Teach- 
ers' College High School — are the earnest, and which 
promises to bring the city campus into more than fair com- 
parison with the others. 

What the University has come to in the course of its 
minority — colleges, schools, and extra-mural activities — 
may best be seen in a table adapted from the regents' re- 
port to the legislature for the biennium that has brought 
the institution to its majority. The table is a little for- 
bidding, but it presents an array of just those services that 



THE UNIVERSITY TODAY 107 

have been wanted, and presents, too, something of the 
comparative demand for them in the number of students 
enrolled for each one. It is not quite just, however, either 
to the institution as a whole or to the individual parts of 
it, to let the table stand without adding a grain of salt to 
its interpretation. Thus, a dropping off of 881 students in 
the year 1917-18 was an abnormal circumstance due to the 
war, and rather a source of pride than otherwise. The 
preceding year, however, was a normal one, and represents 
better than its successor the normal growth in registration. 
The biennium as a whole, as a result of the growth of that 
year, shows an increase of more than 500 above the enroll- 
ment for the preceding one. The figures, moreover, do not 
include either the S. A. T. C. of the fall of 1918, or the 
2,400 men trained for the army in technical courses, from 
June to December, 1918. 

The table is worth another glance. It reveals other 
things besides the bare proportions of the University. 
Looked at reflectively it speaks of the various ambitions 
which animate the youth of the state and which in the end 
are directed back into the general life — so many engineers, 
so many doctors, so many trained in law, so many in agri- 
culture or domestic economy, and so on. For the most part 
these numbers reflect, not the relative popularity of the 
school or college as such, but, more largely, the general 
needs of the community. For choice of profession goes, by 
and large, with the social demand. 

Another thing to be observed is the degree to which the 
University has developed in its technical and professional 
branches. More than two-thirds of the men and more than 
half the women students of the year 1916-17 were regis- 
tered in the professional courses. And it may be added 
that many of those not so registered were underclassmen, 
freshmen and sophomores, still undecided as to which pro- 
fession to enter, but taking meantime such courses in the 
general curriculum as would give them the chance to try 
their aptitudes. 



108 



UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



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THE UNIVERSITY TODAY 109 

None the less it is observable that the only striking dis- 
proportion in the enrollment is in the case of the wholly 
general and non-professional College of Arts and Sciences. 
The figures for that college, indeed, are somewhat decep- 
tive, for the Teachers' College and some of the schools are 
organized within it and demand certain deductions from 
its totals. Still, after all deductions are made, the numbers 
enrolled there are greater than those of any other division 
of the University, and show a persistent vitality in this 
oldest of all the colleges. 

The problem of the arts college is today the principal 
problem of higher education in America, and especially in 
the state universities of the Middle West. The keying up 
of the economic life and the growing disrepute of leisure 
have tended to put a pressure upon the student to make 
every moment of his training count — in almost a Prussian 
degree — toward his efficiency in some demonstrably useful 
activity. Out of this shift of emphasis there has grown a 
corresponding vagueness as to the exact values for which 
the arts college is to stand. But however much technical 
training may become the chief function of the state uni- 
versity, it can not wholly displace the pursuit of those other 
studies whose aim is to inform the mind broadly in the 
thoughts and experience of the past, and put the present 
into its just perspective by widening the student's outlook. 
How vitally this purpose clings to the prevailing idea of 
education is to be seen in the enrollment in those courses 
that have no other reason for being. And the problem of 
the arts college lies in the proper correlation of those 
studies to that end. 

To return to the general condition of the University, 
perhaps the best survey of the range of subjects of study 
offered by its colleges in its fiftieth year, and of the teach- 
ing done in them, may be had in a glance at the list of its 
separate departments and the numbers of students regis- 
tered in them in a recent typical semester. 



110 



UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



Departments of the University 

Registration for the first semester 

1916-17 



Agricultural chemistry 257 

Agricultural extension 17 

Agronomy 130 

American history..... 369 

Animal husbandry 252 

Animal pathology 51 

Astronomy and 

meteorology 76 

Bacteriology and 

pathology 32 

Botany 347 

Chemistry 812 

Dairy husbandry 166 

Economics and com- 
merce 1023 

Education 372 

Education, sciences in 

secondary 37 

Education, secondary .. 34 
Educational theory and 

practice 313 

Engineering, agricul- 
tural 228 

Engineering, civil 155 

Engineering, electrical 132 
Engineering, mechani- 
cal 276 

Applied mechanics 283 

English history 141 

English literature 1038 



Entomology 

European history 

Farm management 

Fine arts. 

Geography 

Geology 

German 

Greek history and 
literature 

Home economics 

Horticulture 

Mathematics 

Military science 

Philosophy 

Physical education 

Physics 

Physiology 

Plant pathology and 
physiology 

Political science and 
sociology 

Rhetoric 

Roman history and 
literature 

Romance languages 

School administration- 
Slavonic 

Zoology, anatomy, his- 
tology 



96 
177 

84 
981 
165 
120 
731 

37 
393 
115 
651 
614 
444 
1087 
415 
320 

63 

655 
1762 

143 

790 

33 

88 

561 



If this glance at the condition of the University today 
may be taken to include a survey of the past decade under 
the chancellorship of Dr. Avery, another set of tables may 
be of interest as showing the growth of the University 
plant during that period. The comparison is striking. 



THE UNIVERSITY TODAY 111 

Degrees granted before 1909 s 3674 

Degrees granted since 1909 4124 

Size of City Campus, 1909 11.9 acres 

Size of City Campus, 1919 36 acres 

Value of University Bldgs., 1909....$ 685.000) <R1 ^n™ 
Value of Equipment, 1909....? 500,000) ^ i » i5D » uuu 

Value of University Bldgs., 1919.-$1,101,760 ) <* 9 9A( . 7fi0 
Value of Equipment, 1919_...$1,145,000 j *^«M W 



Value of Important Buildings Erected 
Since 1909 — City Campus 

Bessey Hall $170,000 

Chemistry Hall 189,000 

Law Building 92,000 

Boiler House 32,000 

Social Science Building 275,000 

Teachers' College 140,000 



$898,000 

Farm Campus 

New Dairy Building $175,000 

Agricultural Engineering Hall 165,000 

Plant Industry Building 84,235 

Horse Barn 33,500 

Boiler House and Equipment 41,000 

Hog Cholera Serum Laboratory 7,500 

Machine Shed 6,275 

$512,510 
Omaha Campus 

Laboratory Building $104,500 

Hospital 147,800 

New Laboratory Building 120,000 



112 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

Comparison of the Values of University 
Buildings, 1909 and 1919 

City Campus 

1909 1919 

University Hall $ 50,000 $ 44,000 

Administration Building 34,000 31,000 

Temple 100,000 91,000 

Bessey Hall 170,000 

Chemistry HalL. 189,000 

Mechanical Engineering Building.... 115,000 110,000 

Law Building 92,000 

Nebraska Hall.. 21,000 15,000 

Brace Laboratory.... 72,000 66,000 

Pharmacy Building 40,000 30,000 

Library Building 95,000 85,000 

Grant Memorial Hall 20,000 17,500 

Soldiers' Memorial Hall 28,000 24,000 

Museum 48,000 45,000 

Mechanic Arts Hall 26,000 24,000 

Electrical Laboratory 7,000 6,000 

Boiler House and Equipment 29,000 61,000 

Social Science Building 275,000 

Teachers' College... 140,000 

$685,000 $1,516,000 

Farm Campus 

1909 1919 

Agricultural Hall $ 60,000 $..55,550 

Women's Building 65,000 59,000 

New Dairy Building 175,000 

Agricultural Engineering 165,000 

Plant Industry Building 84,000 

Experiment Station 25,000 20,000 

Judging Pavilion 30,000 27,000 

Veterinary Building.. 12,500 11,000 

Machinery Hall and Shops 10,000 8,500 

Hog Cholera Serum Laboratory.. 7,500 

Horse Barn 33,500 

Boiler House and Equipment 41,000 

Old Boiler House 11,000 10,720 

Machine Shed 6,275 



$213,500 $704,280 
Sherlock B. Gass. 



THE UNIVERSITY TODAY 113 



THE FUTURE 

The future is always in a certain sense prophesied by 
the past ; and this is most of all true of an institution which, 
having lived through a certain period of historic forma- 
tion, has, as it were, settled itself in a course defined by its 
own conscious tradition. The University of Nebraska has 
reached such a stage of development. During its fifty years 
of history it has passed from the state of eager hope, which 
attended its first seasons, to a state of conscious possession, 
with attainments recognized and promise assured. It has 
ceased to be a college of the raw prairies, with breadths of 
empty space, expanses of future time, and the changing 
winds of its aspirations for its natural atmosphere; it has 
become a powerful university, with a world-wide name, and, 
in a true sense, an Alma Mater whose children are to be 
found in all the quarters where men dwell, there carrying 
her memory in their affections and preserving her spirit 
in their lives. Nebraska is not institutionally old, even in 
the sense in which the great universities of the Atlantic 
states are old, but she is institutionally mature, and she has 
a right to the throne of maturity and to the honors of a 
mother of learning. Which so being, she possesses an 
image and a character — the throned and laurelled Alma 
Mater — whose proper reading is her future. 

The fundamental in that character, the great note to 
which all others ring, is hers by gift of that spirit in which 
she first came into being. Those ugly but dear bricks that 
form the old main building which, now cherishingly en- 
closed by finer halls, first stood so bleak and upstarting on 
the treeless campus, embodied no material shape merely in 
those early days of the seventies when hands that had but 
just broken the virgin sod turned to their piling. Rather, 
they embodied an idea and a faith, each so luminous that 
the halo of them still lingers about and redeems the physical 
ugliness. For the University was founded and the build- 
ing was built out of a conception of learning and a faith 



114 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

in its value for the youthful state and for the youth of the 
state which were its true baptismal spirit and which gave 
and give to the University its prime character. With a 
propriety for which all Nebraska's children must be thank- 
ful, the institution saw the light as a College of Liberal 
Arts, and it developed as such a college for a period of suf- 
ficient length to stamp indelibly upon her that reverence for 
liberal learning which is the inscrutable essence of all bet- 
ter culture. Nebraska possessed such a reverence from the 
first: it was avowed in the fresh curiosity of the first 
generations of students, outwardly a bit uncouth as mem- 
ory pictures them, but all eager-eyed to the world of knowl- 
edge ; and it was the actuation of the lives of the early pro- 
fessors, men of books and of traditions, but willing to 
devote their days to the untaught West that they might 
there show the way to readers of books and makers of 
tradition. With such a core of light Nebraska's star was 
kindled. 

Afterwards came the technical schools. Civilization is 
never of simple design ; and the growing needs of a grow- 
ing state — farmstead after farmstead taking form on the 
rolling plains, and town and city rising yearly to make 
firm the social structure — steadily complexified the demands 
for training made upon the state's great central institution. 
There must be physicians, lawyers, teachers, engineers, 
scientists, agriculturists, economists, artists, — all these and 
others with special preparation for the specialized needs 
of a civilized state; and year by year the University has 
been called upon to build housings and create colleges to 
meet the needs of an expanding social life. Today the old 
college hall is but one unit in a maze of structures, and the 
old curriculum but a tracing in the rich variety announced 
by the annual catalogue. To not a few, who, recall the 
fresher days, the change brings with it a pang of regret: 
for there was something eternally charming in that simple 
faith in learning, untempered by thought of vocation. 
Nevertheless, seen from the great vantage of a whole 
society, we all know that any institution of learning which 



THE UNIVERSITY TODAY 115 

serves the varied life of a civilized commonwealth must do 
so by building for all its arts and all its professions: no 
trivium, no quadrivium, can plot the University course of 
the future ; rather there must be a multi-vium, a branching 
into the manifold paths along which men's activities move. 
Yet this, be it not forgotten, cannot be without some gen- 
eral orientation: there must be the initial course which 
gives the true direction followed by all the branches and 
leads to the one end of all which we call human progress. 
That initial course and true orientation Nebraska fortun- 
ately received from her first college, devoted to the liberal 
learning which must always be the inspiration and the 
guide of her institutional life, as it is the soul of her final 
mission. 

Nebraska's past, then, is the prophecy of her future, 
and in it her future is to be read. In a material sense it 
means continued years of building — which, indeed, is one 
of the noblest of human activities, for there is no truer 
index of the greatness of human civilization than is the 
greatness of architecture. Today most of the sciences are 
well housed on the several campuses, but there are still to 
come the housing for the library (whose free use is as life- 
giving respiration to the institution), the erection of a 
museum to preserve both the natural history treasures in 
which Nebraska is rich and the treasures of art which with 
encouragement and devotion she will yet create, the as- 
sembly hall which shall give a place for the University's 
formal dignities, and the dormitories which should give 
comfort and esprit to the crowding generations of students. 
All these must come in time, and with them, we may hope, 
broad-branched campus trees and grassy plots, remindful 
of scholastic revery. But inwardly and truly these can be 
only an outward symbol of the one genuine and lasting 
Spirit of the University, through which, while it lives, the 
University will continue to live and to grow in greatness, 
and which itself is neither more nor less than that love of 
learning and that faith in the natural devotion of Nebraska 
boys and girls to unselfish knowledge in which the first 



116 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

college was conceived and founded. On her knee Alma 
Mater bears an open book and in her hand she lifts a lighted 
lamp : the book is the Wisdom of the Past, left as a testa- 
ment by those who have been men before us; the lamp is 
the Revelation of the Future, casting its quiet illumination 
along the way which they who have read the past will fol- 
low with the composure of a faith assured. 

Hartley B. Alexander. 



FOUNDER'S HYMN 

Upon this wild and lone frontier 
Behold the edifice we rear — 
With yet no homes to call our own : 
Man shall not live by bread alone. 

We raise no cloisters richly dight, 
Casting a dim religious light; 
We will no student monks or nuns, 
We build for daughters as for sons. 

Here shall our youth know what is known, 
Here grow to heights great men have grown ; 
Here some shall make themselves a name, 
Here some be known to old-world fame. 

Here shall our State take earliest pride, 
Herein first match all states beside ; 
Hence men shall go to strengthen hands, 
And build up lore in older lands. 

A generation hence shall be 
New builders, bold of faith as we ; 
For millions yet shall crowd these fields, 
And claim the best our culture yields. 

— -L. A. Sherman. 
February 15, 1894. 



117 



118 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



PERSONAL SKETCHES 



ALLEN RICHARDSON BENTON 

Chancellor of the University of Nebraska 1871-1876 

The first chancellor of the University of Nebraska was 
Allen Richardson Benton. Chancellor Benton remained at 
Nebraska five years, during which he equipped University 
Hall, planned the campus, and increased interest in the 
institution by speech-making tours over the state. The 
period of Chancellor Benton's administration was the period 
of the grasshopper plague, of drouths, and of consequent 
financial depression, but he remained long enough to see 
the institution well launched. During its early years the 
University had a hard struggle for its existence. A con- 
siderable portion of the inhabitants of the state were housed 
in dugouts and sod houses, and yet with an unusual vision 
of the future, they loyally sustained the University. It was 
during an especially distressing year that Chancellor Ben- 
ton asked the regents to take about one-third from his 
salary and give it to an assistant professor. 

I entered the University in September, 1873, attracted 
to the institution by an address delivered by the Chancellor 
at a teachers' institute in Sarpy county in the previous win- 
ter. Chancellor Benton took a keen interest in the young 
people who came under his influence. According to the cus- 
tom of those days the Chancellor also performed the ordi- 
nary functions of a professor and regularly taught a con- 
siderable number of classes. Bred to the ministry, yet he 
was for that time very broad in his sympathies and liberal 
in his toleration. He had a peculiar faculty of making his 
students feel quite at home, and many appreciated an inti- 
mate friendship with him. The number of students was 
not large, and the classes, especially those doing university 
work, as distinguished from work in the preparatory school, 



CHANCELLOR A. R. BENTON 119 

were naturally small. This fostered an intimacy between 
teacher and pupil that has become quite impossible with 
the growth of later years. 

To Chancellor Benton and his occasional addresses over 
the state was due in no small degree the confidence of the 
people in the ultimate success of their University. He made 
them feel that the young men and women of the state were 
fortunate to come under his influence, and were sure to 
receive inspiration from contact with him. 

Chancellor Benton was born in Cayuga County, New 
York, in 1822. His father Allen Benton, was a descendant 
of the Ethan Allen family in Vermont. He attended Ful- 
ton Academy, Oswego, New York, thence went to Bethany 
College, Virginia, now in West Virginia, where he was 
graduated with first honors in mathematics and languages 
in 1847. Following graduation, he conducted an academy 
in Rush county, Indiana, for six years. At the end of this 
time', declining a professorship of mathematics at his alma 
mater, Bethany, he accepted a professorship of ancient 
languages at Northwestern Christian University, which 
opened in 1855 at Indianapolis. He served there as presi- 
dent and professor for many years. In January, 1871, he 
was elected as the first chancellor of the University of Ne- 
braska. In 1876, he returned to Northwestern Christian 
University, now Butler College, as professor of philosophy, 
and was soon elected its president. Dr. Benton resigned 
in 1900, and retired from educational work, having taught 
in academy and college for more than fifty consecutive 
years. He left three children, Grace Benton Dales, wife of 
J. Stuart Dales, the first graduate of the University of 
Nebraska and present secretary of the board of regents, 
Mattie Benton Stewart, wife of Judge W. E. Stewart of 
Lincoln, and Howard Benton of Indianapolis. His grand- 
son, Benton Dales, was professor of chemistry at the Uni- 
versity from 1903 till 1917, when he left academic work 
to enter commercial life. 

It was my good fortune to renew my acquaintance with 
Chancellor Benton after he returned to Lincoln to spend 



120 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

the remainder of his days, and he never tired of talking of 
his early experiences in Nebraska, and of his abiding faith 
in the progress of the state and the growth of the Univer- 
sity. I well remember that in the closing months of his 
life he said to me that the two things in his career as chan- 
cellor that gave him most satisfaction were the exchange 
of the original College Farm, lying near where the present 
state fair grounds are situated, for the tract of land that 
has since become the pride of the agricultural interests of 
Nebraska, and the other was the designing of the seal of 
the University of Nebraska, which he told me he designed 
while taking a long railway journey to the East. 

I have known somewhat intimately all the chancellors 
of the University, and to each and all of them the state is 
indebted for a peculiar service rendered to the University, 
and certainly not the least of these debts it owes to Chan- 
cellor A. R. Benton. 

Henry H. Wilson. 



EDMUND BURKE FAIRFIELD 
Chancellor of the University of Nebraska 1876-1882 

Edmund Burke Fairfield was born in Virginia, August 
7, 1821. His ancestors came from France to America in 
1639, bearing the family name of Beauchamp. He was 
graduated from Oberlin College in 1842, and from Oberlin 
Theological seminary in 1845, and became pastor of the 
Ruggles Street Baptist Church in Boston in 1847. In 1849 
he became president of Hillsdale College, Michigan, and 
remained there until 1870. During his residence in Michi- 
gan he was a state senator and lieutenant governor of 
Michigan. After an interval of five years during which 
he served as pastor of the First Congregational Church at 
Mansfield, Ohio, he returned to educational work, in 1875, 
as president of a Pennsylvania state normal college, and 



CHANCELLOR E. B. FAIRFIELD 121 

was chosen in 1876 as Chancellor of the University of Ne- 
braska, where he remained until 1882. 

The administration of Chancellor Fairfield at Nebraska 
was a somewhat tempestuous period in the history of the 
University. It was characterized by a factional struggle 
in the faculty, accounts of which may be read in the Omaha 
and Lincoln papers of the day. On the one side were the 
head of the institution and his supporters, largely of de- 
nominational school training, and on the other side were 
the young and vigorous champions of non-sectarianism in 
the conduct of the institution and of new and liberal views 
in education. Those of the radical faction who were chiefly 
involved were three men of unusual brilliance, namely 
George E. Woodberry, of the department of English litera- 
ture, later the noted poet and critic; Harrington Emerson 
of the department of foreign languages, to whom is chiefly 
due the nation-wide "efficiency" movement and slogan of the 
last decade; and George E. Church of the chair of Latin. 
The upshot of the factional struggle was that all four men, 
the chancellor and the three brilliant young professors, left 
the service of the institution. 

After leaving Nebraska, Dr. Fairfield became pastor of 
the Congregational Church at Manistee, Michigan, until 
1889, when he was appointed by President Harrison as 
United States Consul at Lyons, France. He returned from 
France in 1893, and made his home at Grand Rapids, Michi- 
gan, where he lectured and wrote until 1896. In 1896 he 
returned to preach for a few years at his old church in 
Mansfield, Ohio, and then retired to Oberlin, where he died, 
November 17, 1904, after an active and-usef ul life of eighty- 
three years. 

Clement Chase. 



122 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

J. IRVING MANATT 

Chancellor of the University of Nebraska 1884-1889 

The American state university is a nineteenth century 
innovation in higher education. Some foreshadowings of 
it appeared much earlier. In 1619 Virginia proposed a land 
grant for the establishment of a university. The state of 
Massachusetts gave some aid to Harvard University. The 
constitutions of Pennsylvania and of North Carolina in 
1776 provided for a secular support of state education. It 
was not until the legislature of Michigan in 1837 granted 
a charter for a university, supported and controlled by the 
state that the modern state university came into being. 
Prior to its advent higher education was in the hands of 
the church, through the different denominational colleges 
and universities. They prepared men for the ministry and 
the other learned professions. The new university was to 
be supported and controlled by the state. Its aim was not 
to supplant the private college, but to add to it a new ele- 
ment, as is shown by the fact that two classes of institu- 
tions were provided for : one modelled after the former col- 
lege, to educate for the learned professions, and the other 
to provide instruction in the varied industries. 

Other northwestern states promptly followed Michigan's 
example. Nebraska under the leadership of Thomas B. 
Cuming, territorial governor from 1854 to 1858, made 
numerous attempts to provide for higher education. Gov- 
ernor Cuming, himself a college man, in his first message 
urged that careful provision be made for education. Dur- 
ing his administration twenty-five charters were granted 
for higher education, and others followed, none of which 
have survived. The state legislature on February 15th, 
1869, granted a charter for the organization of our present 
state university and industrial college. 

A safe model for the innovation did not exist. Neither 
the American college nor the German university fitted well 
into the conditions. It is in no wise strange that men 
brought into the faculty and chancellorship from the older 




CHANCELLOR J. IRVING MANATT 



CHANCELLOR /. IRVING MANATT 123 

institutions (and the regents had little else to choose from) 
should have different ideals, which in those days of pioneer- 
ing and experimentation would come into conflict. Such a 
situation in the University of Nebraska cause3 the retire- 
ment of its first three chancellors. The contest became the 
most pronounced in 1882, resulting in the reorganization 
of the faculty after several removals and resignations. 

Professor J. Irving Manatt was called to the chancellor- 
ship of our University January 1, 1884, at a time when the 
echoes of the former conflict had not entirely died away. 
He was born in Millersburg, Ohio, February 17, 1845. In 
the last year of the civil war he served as a private in the 
46th Iowa regiment. He was graduated from Grinnell 
College in 1869, and received the A. M. degree from Brown 
University in 1872, and the degree of Ph. D. from Yale 
University in 1873 and from Leipzig in 1877. He was pro- 
fessor of Greek in Dennison University 1874-1876 and held 
the same professorship in Marietta college 1877-1884. His 
four years of administration here were marked by con- 
siderable unrest in the University, owing partly to the 
survival of former conditions, partly to his poor health, 
and partly to the fact that the qualifications required of a 
chancellor in the early eighties were of a kind for which 
his previous experience in private colleges had not prepared 
him. He was primarily a great scholar and temperament- 
ally a strong and inspiring teacher — qualities not at that 
time demanded of a chancellor. What was needed was a 
masterful man who could mould a new and restless com- 
munity, direct a legislature, hold all manner of interests 
in check, and particularly one who could harmonize a 
faculty of divergent ideals and contrary theories on the 
new education. To find the right man then was largely a 
matter of chance. The regents had to grope their way for 
twenty years. It was not until the state institutions had 
developed their aims and crystallized their ideals that a 
man was found that fitted into the conditions. From that 
time on the work of selection was greatly simplified. 

However the early administrations should not be con- 
sidered failures. A certain amount of administrative 



124 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

pioneering was necessary. Other state universities often 
had experiences similar to ours. Under the Manatt regime 
our University made great development in certain direc- 
tions. His scholarly instincts served him well in selecting 
men for the faculty positions. In this respect he knew 
what was needed. He studied the field thoroughly and 
exercised good judgment in his choices. During his ad- 
ministration such eminent names appear for the first time 
in the catalog as A. H. Edgren, L. E. Hicks, C. E. Bessey, 
C. E. Bennett, J. G. White, Rachel Lloyd, E. W. Hunt, D. B. 
Brace, F. S. Billings, J. S. Kingsley. Again, he thoroughly 
appreciated that the University is a part of the public 
school system of the state, and promptly sought to bring 
the University and high schools into organic relationship. 
With State Superintendent Jones he visited Michigan, Iowa, 
and other states, to study their systems. He proposed for 
the high schools major and minor courses of study, the 
completion of which would admit a student to the freshman 
class and the second year of the Latin school respectively, 
without examination. A joint committee of the faculty 
and of superintendents and principals formulated the 
courses. They were promptly adopted by many high 
schools. Arrangement was made for the inspection of the 
schools by members of the faculty. These provisions led 
to the abolition of the Latin school in the year 1895-6 and 
ultimately to our fully developed system of accredited 
schools. The close articulation with the high schools, in- 
augurated in the years 1884-1888, contributed in no small 
degree to the rapid growth of the University in numbers 
and influence under succeeding administrations. 

In his use of English Chancellor Manatt had few equals. 
His language was clear, chaste, strong, stripped of con- 
scious adornment and thus adorned the most — a rare gift. 
His Phi Beta Kappa address delivered here in 1902 upon 
Our Hellenic Heritage, while readily lending itself to ab- 
strusities, was easily comprehensible by the lay mind. His 
choice of words, his phrasing, and arrangement of sen- 
tences were not colored by the language of his life study, 
but they all stood forth in the purest English. He was 



CHANCELLOR J. IRVING MAN ATT 125 

perhaps the most felicitous in his brief offhand addresses. 
Whether his hearers agreed with his thought or not, all 
accredited him with clothing it in elegant and beautiful 
form. 

His scholarly attainments brought Dr. Manatt a dis- 
tinguished career after leaving the University. He was 
United States consul at Athens in 1889-1893, was called to 
the professorship of Greek history and literature in Brown 
University in 1892, was manager of the committee of the 
American school at Athens, a delegate to the first inter- 
national congress of archaeology at Athens in 1905, mem- 
ber of the American Philological Association, the American 
Social Science Association, and the Society for the Promo- 
tion of Hellenic studies. As an author he published 
Xenophon's Hellenica in 1888, the Mycenean Age in 1897, 
and Aegean Days in 1914. The last is the best known of 
his publications. It seems to have been a veritable labor of 
love, the outgrowth of his intimacy with Greece during 
his consulate in Athens and his three subsequent visits. 
The pages are full of literary and historical lore and reveal 
the author's thorough appreciation and understanding of 
Greek culture. He was a frequent contributor to reviews 
and magazines. His career closed as doubtless he would 
have wished it, in laying aside the duties of his professor- 
ship at Brown and his life at the same time, February 
14, 1915. 

Grove E. Barber. 



126 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

JAMES HULME CANFIELD 

Chancellor of the University of Nebraska 1891-1895 

It is related that Themistocles once excused himself 
from participating in the gayety of a feast, but declared 
that though unable to sing a song or tune the lyre, he could 
take a poor and mean city and make it rich and famous. 
He had in mind the phenomenal prosperity of Athens after 
the Persian wars, and in part, at least, his boast was true ; 
for during his lifetime and largely through his counsel the 
insignificant Attic town rose from her ruins to be the 
mistress of Greece. 

So far as such results can be compassed by one man, 
an analogous success attended Chancellor Canfield's efforts 
when he set about to transform a local institution of small 
reputation into a great university. And the parallel be- 
tween him and the Athenian statesman further holds in the 
untoward conditions under which this transformation was 
achieved. The outlook in the early '90's, when the new 
chancellor assumed charge, was far from roseate. The in- 
dustries of the country at large were prostrate and hard 
times were general. In addition, Nebraska was suffering 
from a series of drouths ; farmers were in debt ; prices were 
low; trade languished. What chance for growth and ex- 
pansion in those years of depression! Nevertheless the 
University did grow and expand, and so marked were the 
changes wrought, so great~the accession of students, so en- 
larged the scope and reputation of the University under 
the leadership of Dr. Canfield that the four years of his 
administration truly marked the beginning of a new epoch 
in the history of the institution. 

That he was a man of inexhaustible energy and a tire- 
less worker is the testimony of all who knew him. It was 
chiefly this dynamic quality of his mind that enabled him 
to surmount the difficulties of the times. He possessed in 
exceptional measure many of the best characteristics of a 
successful man of business, — prompt initiative, organizing 
ability, habits of order and precision, power to grasp large 




CHANCELLOR J. H. CANFIELD 



CHANCELLOR J. H. CANFIELD 127 

issues, capacity for details, — and his legal training and his 
earlier experience as a railway superintendent helped to 
make him a keen judge of human nature. To these domin- 
ant qualities of leadership were added many amiable traits 
that account for his wide and permanent popularity. Af- 
fable and sympathetic with all classes of people, he easily 
won the hearts of both the students and the general public ; 
a vein of ready humor went along well with his cheerful 
optimism, and his habitual simplicity of speech and de- 
meanor was unfeigned and convincing. He was, in the 
best sense, a man of the people. 

The career of scholar and educator had not originally 
been contemplated by Dr. Canfield, but a genuine interest 
in young people and a deep concern for their welfare, — 
characteristic traits of his generous nature, — plainly pointed 
the way he was to go. His educational ideals were such 
as would naturally develop from his strongly practical and 
active temperament. For pure scholarship and scientific 
attainments he had profound esteem, but he left to others 
prolonged research in the laboratory and the writing of 
learned monographs. In fact, though master of compact 
and trenchant English, he wrote comparatively little. It 
was on the spoken word that he placed his chief reliance 
and in countless addresses he spread abroad the gospel of 
sound education as a basis for sane living, never failing 
to present the University as the best place to attain that 
end. This broad-cast seeding brought abundant harvest. 
His ardent enthusiasm awakened in many a Nebraska boy 
and girl a desire for higher education, and his practical 
counsel often helped to clear the way to the realization of 
this desire. The statistics of registration are eloquent of 
his zeal and success. Prior to 1891 the annual enrollment 
in the University had never exceeded five hundred students, 
and was often less; four years later it exceeded fifteen 
hundred. 

Chancellor Canfield by happy fortune came to the Uni- 
versity just when the special problems of the time required 
such special talents as were his. There was particular 
need of buoyant optimism and glowing prophecy during 



128 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

those gloomy years, and of these qualities he had large 
store. Even adverse conditions he skilfully utilized and 
urged the general economic stagnation as a fitting occasion 
to get an education. "If you cannot earn, you at least can 
learn," and his sensible advice and particularly his attrac- 
tive personality, not too far removed from his hearers' 
comprehension, had peculiar weight in those days of doubt 
and indecision. He never lost an opportunity to set forth 
with a vigor and cogency unprecedented in earlier adminis- 
trations the scope and aims of the State University. In 
the East denominational colleges were numerous and strong, 
deeply rooted in the social life, and secure in a well-defined 
clientele; in the West the educational field was relatively 
unoccupied and it was the function of the state to occupy 
it. Here education should send out new roots and derive 
support from every class. Many-sided, democratic, free; 
unhampered by tradition and keenly alive to practical needs, 
the University was to be not merely to the select few an 
exclusive club, but to all alike the open door to useful 
knowledge and practical wisdom. This was the continual 
burden of Chancellor Canfield's message, delivered in sea- 
son and out of season everywhere up and down the state. 
The idea, to be sure, was not wholly new, but still after 
twenty years of existence the University had not greatly 
developed nor found a particularly warm place in the hearts 
of the people. It was of primal importance that numbers 
should be greatly augmented if the University was to bulk 
large in the consciousness of the people and secure for it- 
self the material support it required. Throughout the state 
were many young persons intelligent and capable, but un- 
schooled beyond the rudiments of learning. To set this 
large body in motion towards the University preliminary 
attainments in knowledge must not be too rigidly pre- 
scribed, nor the indicated goal put too remote. Hence the 
Chancellor's favorite definition of the University as merely 
the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth grades 
of the common schools. It was hardly adequate, and today 
we realize that a university comprehends something more 
than that ; but then, and under Chancellor Canfield's skilful 



CHANCELLOR J. H. CANF1ELD 129 

presentation, this simple description was admirably cal- 
culated for a special end. It was a view at once novel and 
plausible and rendered efficient service in persuading many 
that a university education was both logical and feasible. 
Thus there was ample justification for the emphasis that 
Chancellor Canfield placed on the quantitative side of uni- 
versity development. Higher education, it is true, cannot 
thrive by numbers only ; in the last analysis the University 
must be judged by intellectual and moral standards rather 
than by statistics and sums total. Nevertheless increasing 
numbers are a very real and visible evidence of healthy 
interest and vigorous growth, especially in the earlier 
stages, and to this mediate goal of larger numbers Chan- 
cellor Canfield chiefly directed his efforts, doubtless realiz- 
ing meanwhile that this, when reached, would be but the 
starting point for higher levels. How signally he succeeded 
in his purpose is known to most citizens of Nebraska, who, 
perchance, have but dim and vague knowledge of the work 
of his predecessors. The important services of these are 
not to be forgotten nor ignored, but the achievements of 
Chancellor Canfield's comparatively brief administration 
stand out in clear and shining relief, and it is only sober 
truth to say that he, more than any other man, ushered 
in the golden era of the University's prosperity and great- 
ness. 

Dr. Canfield on leaving Nebraska assumed the presi- 
dency of the State University of Ohio, and he subsequently 
became Librarian of Columbia University. He remained 
to the end of his life the practical man of affairs, the keen 
observer of current life and tendencies, the wise and help- 
ful counsellor to aspiring youth. His little book of advice 
to university students, published some years before his de- 
cease, embodies his view of education and contains much 
that could profit the reader, be he young or old. 

W. F. Dann. 



130 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS 

Chancellor of the University of Nebraska 1900-1908 

Among the men who have built and served the Univer- 
sity of Nebraska, one of the most dynamic personalities 
was Elisha Benjamin Andrews. A man of wide and rich 
personal experience, he had also a breadth and depth of 
scholarly training, a literary productivity, a range of in- 
terest, a wealth of imagination and of humor, a devotion 
to duty and vision, and a genius in moving and leading men 
which made him an outstanding figure in the educational 
life of the nation. 

Born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire, on January 10, 1844, 
he came into a family whose heads for two generations 
had been Baptist ministers of prominence. His brother, 
Charles B. Andrews, became governor of Connecticut in 
1879-81. E. Benjamin began to prepare for college at the 
Connecticut Literary Institute. Interrupted, however, by 
the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted as a private in 
the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery. In two years he 
had risen to the rank of second lieutenant. He was wounded 
during the siege of Petersburg, in 1864, losing the left eye. 
Mustered out, he resumed his studies, graduating at Brown 
in 1870, and at the Newton Theological Institute in 1874. 

After a year in the pastorate at Beverly, Mass., he was 
called to the presidency of Denison University, at Gran- 
ville, Ohio, and served there until 1879. Transferring back 
to Newton, he was for three years professor of homiletics. 
In 1882 he was appointed to the chair of history and poli- 
tical economy in Brown University. He spent the next 
year in preparatory studies in Europe. In his work at 
Brown his reputation was quickly established. The Uni- 
versity of Nebraska gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1884. 
In 1888 he went to Cornell University, returning, however, 
in 1889 as president of Brown. 

The leadership of Dr. Andrews at Brown during the 
ensuing nine years gave new life and power to the institu- 
tion. Attendance of undergraduate men rose from 276 to 



CHANCELLOR E. B. ANDREWS 



CHANCELLOR E. B. ANDREWS 131 

641, and other increases were proportionate. But no quan- 
titative measurement expresses the quickening of life and 
enthusiasm which animated the entire body, under the in- 
spiration of a born leader of young men. The Brown con- 
stituency was at all times intensely loyal to E. Benjamin 
Andrews, — "Bennie," as they affectionately called him. 

Dr. Andrews had long been a believer in bimetallism. 
In 1897 a committee of the trustees requested of him, "not 
a renunciation of these views, as honestly entertained by 
him, but a forbearance, out of regard to the interests of 
the University, to promulgate them." While he had in 
fact always used due discretion, he took the ground that 
he could not meet the understood wishes of the Corpora- 
tion "without surrendering that reasonable liberty of utter- 
ance ... in the absence of which the most ample en- 
dowment for an educational institution would have but lit- 
tle worth." He immediately resigned. But the Corporation 
had not purposed this result. At a subsequent meeting the 
trustees adopted an explanatory letter, declaring that "It 
was not in our minds to prescribe the path in which you 
should tread, or to administer to you any official rebuke, 
or to restrain your freedom of opinion, or 'reasonable 
liberty of utterance ;' " and expressing the hope that he 
would withdraw his resignation. President Andrews did 
so, and remained at Brown until, in 1898, he "resigned to 
accept the superintendency of the Chicago public schools. 
He made this transfer, however, mainly to facilitate Brown's 
quest of much-needed endowments. 

Summoned to the chancellorship of the University of 
Nebraska on April 11, 1900, Dr. Andrews entered upon 
the functions of that office August 1. His great hearted 
spirit quickly dissipated any forebodings that partisan poli- 
tics might conceivably at this juncture affect university 
management. It was recognized at once that the new lead- 
ership was clear in purpose, resolute in decision, academic 
in its standards, and influential in its popular appeal — a 
strong administration. 



132 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

At Nebraska also Chancellor Andrews' headship was a 
period of marked growth. The student total advanced from 
2,256 to 3,611. On the faculty, with some sort of profes- 
sorial rank, were 56 persons in 1900, and 390 eight years 
later. The total appropriations for his last biennium 
($1,330,067) were nearly three times that of his first 
($475,000). Even so, the supply of funds did not keep 
pace with his sense of the University's needs; and when 
the regents once added a thousand dollars to his salary, 
he begged that, "so long as the University is compelled to 
the rigid economy it now exercises," he "continue to be 
paid at the present rate." 

Among the main decisions of Chancellor Andrews' ad- 
ministration were, the establishment of the Medical Col- 
lege, under Dean Ward; of the Teachers' College, under 
Dean Fordyce; the construction of the physics building, 
museum, administration building, the Temple, and many 
others; and the bringing into our faculty of such men as 
Professors E. A. Ross, G. E. Howard, M. M. Fogg, Roscoe 
Pound, H. H. Waite, H. K. Wolfe, A. S. Johnson, Hutton 
Webster, and H. B. Alexander. 

The splendid personality of Dr. Andrews made itself 
widely felt through constant lecturing and public activity, 
as well as through steady literary production. For several 
years he maintained also a course in practical ethics to 
which the students came in throngs. Here he displayed 
that remarkable skill in exposition and virility in discus- 
sion, that wonderful blending of high ideals, horse sense, 
humor, and racy anecdote, which had earlier established 
his eminence as a teacher. 

Compelled by ill health to lay down the chancellorship, 
December 31, 1908, Dr. Andrews, accompanied by Mrs. 
Andrews, spent some years abroad. They even went around 
the world in 1909-10. Later they retired to Interlachen, 
Florida, where his death occurred October 30, 1917. He 
is buried on the campus of Denison University. 

A selection from the writings of Dr. Andrews, omitting 
many sermons and articles and minor works, yields the 



DEAN A. H. EDGREN 133 

following book-titles : Institutes of Constitutional History, 
English and American, 1884 ; Institutes of General History, 
1885, 1895; Institutes of Economics, 1889, 1900; History, 
Prophecy, and Gospel, 1891 ; Droy sen's Outlines of the Prin- 
ciples of History (translated), 1893; Wealth and Moral 
Law, 1894 ; An Honest Dollar, 1894 ; History of the United 
States, four volumes, 1894, 1902 ; History of the Last Quar- 
ter-Century in the United States, 1896, 1903; Problems of 
Cosmology (adapted), 1903; The Call of the Land, 1913. 

E. L. HlNMAN. 



AUGUST HJALMAR EDGREN 

Professor of Modern Languages 1885-91 ; Romance 
Languages 1893-1900. 

During the half century of her existence the University 
of Nebraska has had a goodly share of eminent teachers 
and scholars in her service. From the first, good, able men 
were attracted by the opportunities the new state univer- 
sity offered. And still more was this the case when the 
pioneer days were passed, say in the '80's. It was in '85 
that Professor Edgren came to us from the University of 
Lund, Sweden, to fill the chair of modern languages. 

Dr. Edgren was a man of large caliber, both mentally 
and physically. A markedly strong yet fine-featured, in- 
tellectual face, expressive of the scholar's keen interest in 
the field of inquiry and research ; keen, kindly eyes set 
under an ample, broad brow; broad-shouldered, erect, sol- 
dierly, dignified, commanding attention and respect, — thus 
Dr. Edgren rises before those who knew him. 

Dr. Edgren had lived in America before he came to 
Nebraska. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War he, a lover 
of freedom and of freedom's cause, had asked for and ob- 
tained leave of absence from his regiment in Sweden, and 
had offered his services to the Union. He enlisted in the 



134 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

99th regiment of the New York Volunteers, serving in vari- 
ous capacities and sharing many engagements with the 
Army of the Potomac. His previous military training — he 
had graduated from the Swedish Royal Military Academy 
at Stockholm in 1860 — came in good stead and gained him 
appropriate recognition. 

At the expiration of his leave of absence in October, 
1863, Lieutenant Edgren returned to his native land to fol- 
low, — as he then supposed and planned, — his army career 
there. Nevertheless, some aspects of such a career must 
have irked the young lieutenant, for a few years later he 
again obtained leave of absence; this time to pursue his 
studies in France and Germany (1867-68). As a matter 
of fact, this absence from the army proved to be the pre- 
liminary step to his changing his entire life-work. 

In 1870 Edgren returned to America to enter Cornell 
University, which had then been lately organized. At that 
date, however, he had not yet discovered his very special 
talent and predilection for linguistic and literary studies. 
At Cornell he pursued chiefly the study of physical sciences. 
Not until he came under the instruction and guidance of 
Professor Whitney of Yale (1872) was young Edgren to 
enter upon preparation for his real career. At that time 
Professor Whitney was easily the foremost linguistic scholar 
in America. His courses in Comparative Philology, Indo- 
European, Sanskrit, Gothic, etc., appealed strongly to young 
Edgren though, confessedly, his previous lack of train- 
ing along linguistic lines made great demands both upon 
his iron will and his rugged physical constitution. A well- 
earned Ph. D. degree in '74 rewarded long years of inten- 
sive application. 

Soon Edgren proved by his independent researches in 
his chosen field how well he had laid the foundations. Now 
began a singularly active and long career of linguistic and 
literary labors — translations from his favorite authors — 
Longfellow and Tennyson, — from Kalisada, and other In- 
dian classic writers, into his native Swedish or into Eng- 
lish. His researches into Sanskrit verbal-roots involved 




DEAN A. H. EDGREN 



DEAN A. H. EDGREN 135 

an immense amount of patient work, but it resulted in 
materially overhauling, correcting and simplifying data 
which, up to that time, had been regarded as definitively 
established. The American Oriental Society published 
Edgren's work in 1878. This publication was followed up 
in the succeeding years by a Sanskrit grammar (1885) 
and many valuable contributions in the fields of Indo-Euro- 
pean philology, as well as in the Germanic and Romance 
languages. 

When Edgren came to Nebraska in '85, the modern 
languages soon became a favorite study with our student 
body. His classes were crowded. Graduate work was 
gradually being encouraged and developed. The opportuni- 
ties to lay broad and deep foundations for linguistic and 
humanistic studies were taken full advantage of. 

Nevertheless, when, in 1891, the newly opened Univer- 
sity of Gothenburg recalled Professor Edgren to his home- 
land he accepted the call. He served as its first Rector 
Magnificus. 

But some way the lure of the far West, the opportunities 
in new lands, were too strong for him. The spell of Ameri- 
ca's future, her comparative freedom from social conven- 
tionalities, and her young but vigorous institutions, could 
not be thrown off. So, once more, he turned his face to- 
wards Nebraska. This time he became head of the Romance 
department and, a little later, the first dean of the Graduate 
School (1893). No doubt Dr. Edgren would have labored 
and ended his days in our midst, if Sweden had not for the 
third time given him an urgent invitation to give her his 
strength and ripe scholarship. 

As it was, the Nobel Institute, — a Foundation created 
by Baron Alfred Nobel in 1900 for the purpose of giving 
due recognition and appropriate awards to certain lines of 
investigation and scholarship or other signal humanitarian 
service, — elected Edgren as one of its directors. There 
were, according to the terms of the Foundation, awards to 
be made in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or 
medicine, international peace and understanding, and, final- 



136 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

ly, literature properly so called. . It was to serve upon the 
official awarding committee for the latter line of human 
endeavor that Dr. Edgren returned to Sweden in 1900. 
But, alas, only too short were the days accorded him. 
Scarcely had he had time to adjust himself to this new 
sphere of activity when the end came, suddenly and un- 
expectedly. He died of heart disease December 9, 1903, at 
Djursholm, near Stockholm, Sweden. Only a few moments 
before the end he asked to have sent, on his behalf, a fond 
last farewell to his many friends in America. 

Thus passed one of our most gifted friends and col- 
leagues. We, who gathered in the University chapel on 
that bleak Sunday afternoon, February 14, 1904, to recall 
to our minds our departed Dr. Edgren and to do honors to 
his memory, knew whereof we were speaking. Fitting were 
the words spoken, recognizing and doing homage to a rare 
spirit that had for many years dwelt in our midst. The 
University Chorus, led by Mrs. Carrie B. Raymond, ren- 
dered Newman's beautiful "Lead, Kindly Light;" Mrs. R. 
A. Holyoke sang HandePs "I Know That My Redeemer 
Liveth." Then followed some inspiring selections, read by 
Chancellor Andrews, and tributes by Dr. L. A. Sherman, 
Dr. Charles E. Bessey, Mr. Charles H. Gere and myself on 
"The Scholar," "The University Teacher," "The American 
Citizen" and "The Man," respectively. 

I cannot do better, in summing up this short sketch of 
Dr. Edgren's personality and the place he held among us, 
than to quote a few sentiments from my tribute to him 
given on that occasion. I then said: 

"It was my good fortune to learn to know Professor 
Edgren intimately, to learn to know and love him as a 
friend, to receive his hospitality, to offer him mine, to 
ramble over hillside and plain with him when he could be 
induced to tear himself away from his desk, and 'to have a 
talk/ as he used to express it, as we meandered along. I 
do not mean to say that I alone enjoyed this privilege, but 
merely that I always regarded this informal touching of 
elbows as a treat and a privilege. The giving was usually 



DEAN A. H. EDGREN 137 

his, the taking, mine. Thus I learned to value his simple 
tastes, his unostentatious dignity, the catholicity of his 
sympathies, and the gentle forcefulness of his character. 
I witnessed (and often chided) his indefatigable industry 
and application to any task he might have in hand. I 
learned to prize his exceedingly fine poetic sensibilities, his 
aesthetic tastes and temperament, his love of nature, his 
inner life. Professor Edgren was a man of wide sympathies 
and clearness of judgment, very democratic in his views of 
life, a lover of freedom and the rights of man. Rather 
radical in his views, he was thoroughly sincere in his ex- 
amination of forms and theories and tenets of whatever 
sort. Openness to valid arguments, calm reasoning, sanity 
of judgment, insistence upon proof — these constituted his 
intellectual fibre. He had lived too long in the broad free 
West to look with easy tolerance upon the caste and class- 
distinctions of the Old World. True, when on this side of 
the Atlantic, much of our newness and crudeness and un- 
ceremonious 'push' grated upon him. Sometimes it amused 
him, sometimes it irritated him. Yet, despite it all, he rer 
garded it as a truism that 'the future belongs to America/ 
If he loved Sweden, as indeed he did, it was because of its 
glorious history, because of its achievements, because of the 
honesty and sturdiness of the sons and daughters to which 
it gave birth and, forsooth, because it was the land where 
his cradle had rocked." 

Laurence Fossler. 



138 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

CHARLES EDWIN BESSEY 

Professor of Botany and Dean of the Industrial 
College 1884-1915. 

Professor Bessey was notified in June, 1884, that he 
had been elected professor of botany in the University of 
Nebraska. He was then at Ames College, Iowa. The selec- 
tion had been made by the regents of the University without 
his knowledge, but he was sufficiently interested in the 
incident to come to Lincoln "to look the place over." Dur- 
ing that first visit to the University he found that nothing 
had been done along botanical lines and he was quite 
naturally reluctant to leave the accumulation of his fifteen 
years' labor at Ames to go to a new state to build up a new 
department from the very beginning. So he told the re- 
gents that they were not ready for him and declined the 
offer of the professorship. A second offer, extended in 
August of the same year, included the deanship of the in- 
dustrial faculty or college as well as the professorship of 
botany. After another trip to Lincoln and a consultation 
with the board of regents Professor Bessey accepted the 
second call and his inaugural address was delivered at the 
University in September, 1884. He began his active class 
work at the University in January, 1885. His first thought 
was always with the work of his classes in lecture room 
and laboratory and except for a few brief interruptions he 
continued that work to the beginning of his final illness. 

Much of Dr. Bessey's energy was devoted during the 
earlier years of his work in Nebraska to the collection of 
the grasses and other economic plants of the state. He 
made many talks on grasses, weeds, plant diseases, the 
methods of improving plants and the possibilities of a bet- 
ter agriculture. He soon became acquainted with Governor 
Furnas and with him organized the first series of Farmers' 
Institutes which were thereafter periodically enlivened by 
his presence. His first address to the Farmers' Alliance 
was in December, 1884, and to the State Historical Society 
in January, 1885. Then followed years of pleasant and 



DEAN C. E. BESSEY 139 

profitable association with these and all of the other agri- 
cultural organizations of the state. His interest in tree 
planting and his relation to that work in the state and the 
nation attracted wide attention at home and abroad. The 
remarkable work that the United States Forest Service has 
done and is now doing in the Nebraska sandhills is but one 
of the many important undertakings which were directly- 
inspired by Dr. Bessey's enthusiasm and far-sightedness. 

During the later years of his life Dr. Bessey was par- 
ticularly delighted to observe the rapid progress that his 
adopted state was making along the various branches of 
agricultural endeavor. This was interpreted in a modest 
way as a result, in part at least, of the labors he bestowed 
in that direction in his earlier years in Nebraska. No more 
fitting tribute could have been rendered, nor one more 
gratifying to him, than was done in January, 1913, when 
hundreds of people representing all of the agricultural and 
many other activities of the state gathered in his honor 
and when numerous speakers helped to recall the incidents 
of his long period of service which was then in its twenty- 
ninth year. 

The state of Nebraska loved Professor Bessey and he 
reciprocated that affection to the fullest, but that was mere- 
ly one of the many directions toward which an overflowing 
measure of devotion and enthusiasm carried him. His 
broad-mindedness and the many-sidedness of his personal- 
ity made him a valuable citizen of the state because his 
intellectual horizon was broad enough to include the great 
and the small affairs of the state and the nation and to 
stimulate the highest scientific achievement as well. That 
his sterling qualities were esteemed by his associates was 
strikingly illustrated by the great number of important 
offices to which he was elected, both at home and abroad. 
The highest scientific honor of this kind which came to him 
was probably the presidency of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science. His name occurs in the 
list of presidents of that famous organization along with 
such names as Agassiz, Gray, Dana, Torrey, Le Conte, 
Mendenhall, Newcombe, Remsen, and Jordan. 



140 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

Professor Bessey always took a great interest in the de- 
velopment and progress of the agricultural colleges and 
experiment stations. During the early eighties he had con- 
siderable to do in connection with the plans of the federal 
Department of Agriculture looking toward the establish- 
ment of state agricultural experiment stations supported in 
a measure by federal aid. He finally defined the duties of 
such experiment stations in a paragraph which was later 
adopted verbatim as a part of the law known as the Hatch 
Act. It is also of local interest that he wrote the first and 
second annual reports of the Nebraska Agricultural Experi- 
ment Station in 1888 and 1889. 

At about that same time there was considerable agita- 
tion in the state to sell the Experimental Farm or "State 
Farm," but Dr. Bessey threw the full weight of his influ- 
ence against that movement and after a vigorous campaign 
the agitation ceased and the movement was defeated. 

Professor Bessey was the author of many technical and 
semi-popular books and papers. Besides his books and 
numerous technical papers he wrote much for the agricul- 
tural press and for the more or less popular audience. For 
considerable periods of time he was associated editorially 
with a number of botanical and other scientific journals. 
In this capacity he was often called upon to review the 
published work of others. He held very decided opinions 
as to what constitutes a review of a scientific book or paper. 
He felt that what the botanical world wanted was a glimpse 
of what such a book or paper contained rather than a criti- 
cism of the bad points which he might have indicated. 
He very seldom wrote an adverse note. Enthusiastic in his 
praise of good work he was occasionally somewhat harsh 
in the condemnation of obviously worthless or grossly mis- 
leading material. Even this infrequent tendency was not 
altogether unpleasant for the victim, however, because 
everyone knew the kindly spirit in which Professor Bessey 
issued even his criticisms. He always sought to temper 
criticism wherever possible and he seldom spoke or wrote 
an unkind word. He tried to do the good and the pleasant 



DEAN C. E. BESSEY 141 

and to leave undone and unsaid the unpleasant. This was 
a feature of Bessey's general life and in thus living he per- 
formed a service the extent of which is probably not appre- 
ciated by those unfamiliar with its magnitude and signi- 
ficance. 

But Bessey was best known to Nebraskans and to those 
in the University as "Professor" Bessey, the vigorous en- 
thusiastic and devoted exponent of the cause of education 
and the fatherly friend of the student. Except for a few 
hundred dried specimens, many of which indeed were poor- 
ly prepared and even incorrectly named, there was no 
botanical equipment in the University when he entered 
upon his second and last professorship in this institution. 
Truly, Professor Bessey was all that there was of the de- 
partment of botany in the University of Nebraska in 1884. 
But it was not long until there were students, laboratories, 
library, microscopes, herbarium and other equipment in 
abundance. As a result of his labors and the stimulus of 
his teaching the herbarium has grown until now there are 
more than 35,000 specimens in the herbarium of the Botani- 
cal Survey of Nebraska and the general collection contains 
more than 300,000 additional specimens which represent 
nearly all of the floras of the world. The botanical library 
has grown from nothing in the beginning to a very useful 
collection containing several thousand botanical books, 
thousands of pamphlets, and nearly all of the leading botani- 
cal periodicals of home and foreign publication in complete 
files. The laboratories have grown from a room or two in 
University Hall or in the Old Chemical Laboratory and 
later to several rooms in Nebraska Hall. His department 
was always crowded and it is especially sad that he did 
not live to enjoy more commodious quarters in the new 
building which bears his name. 

Bessey's students were numbered by the thousands. One 
of his keenest delights was to page over the lists of former 
students of his department and to picture their lives and 
their labors, often in distant lands, all contributing of their 
thought and effort to the advancement of science and the 



142 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 

betterment of mankind. He was never too busy to drop 
his work instantly for a hearty greeting which often 
lengthened to a real visit with his "boys" when they chanced 
to return to Lincoln for a few hours. He was an inspiring 
adviser to the student. Many times the homesick or dis- 
couraged student left his office rejoicing, with fresh courage 
and real inspiration for his work. This was true not only 
of the botanically inclined but also for others whose pri- 
mary inclination had drawn them into other fields. 

As a teacher Professor Bessey had no superiors. His 
methods in the class room and laboratory were so full of 
boyish enthusiasm, he was so companionable, that the stu- 
dents were simply "infected" with the matter with which 
he dealt. It was the personality of the man which made 
his teaching such a strong factor in student life for nearly 
a half century. The quaint paternal cordiality, so marked 
during the last decade of his life, won the admiration of 
many students who really cared little for botany but who 
took his courses merely to come to know the man, or be- 
cause their father or mother had had work with him and 
they wanted their sons and daughters to come under the 
same benign influence regardless of what they might learn 
of the wonders and beauties of plant life. 

The stimulating methods of the man and the esprit de 
corps that were always conspicuous about his department 
were reflected in a particularly interesting and important 
form in the institution of the Botanical Seminar by a few 
of his advanced students in 1886. The "Sem. Bot." soon 
became and has always been one of the most enthusiastic 
and useful departmental clubs in the land. The organiza- 
tion was largely apart from his supervision but yet his was 
the guiding spirit from which the members drew their en- 
thusiasm whether that factor led them out on a dark night 
to attack the "Lits and Philistines" or sent them into a 
remote section of the state in search of some new element 
of the flora. 

Doctor Bessey was deeply religious, as all understand 
who knew him best. This fact is beautifully portrayed in 



DEAN C. E. BESSEY 143 

his own words spoken upon the occasion of the death of a 
long-time friend who was dear to him. "At the table of 
life we sit with our friends, enjoying their presence, their 
conversation, their counsel; and it seems to us that this 
pleasant company must continue indefinitely. And then — 
one goes into another room, and does not return. His 
vacant chair reminds us of his absence, and we stare in 
sorrow at the place where so recently he sat among us. So 
has gone from us our long-time friend, and so we sit in 
sorrow that we shall see him no more among us. When 
we gather again in the places where we were wont to see 
him we shall miss his genial countenance whose very pres- 
ence was a benediction. To that other room to which he is 
gone we ourselves shall go, and there will be gathered again 
the company of congenial spirits that learned to love each 
other here. He has gone before and left us here a while, 
but we shall follow him very soon and find him there await- 
ing us." No better words or phrases than these could be 
chosen to describe the deep, burning sadness in the hearts 
of Dr. Bessey's admirers as he was laid away. The words 
reveal, in their very simplicity, much of the life and philo- 
sophy of our steadfast friend, of our inspiring teacher, of 
our fatherly associate. 

Dr. Bessey's last illness covered a period of four weeks, 
beginning during the last week of January and culminating 
in his death on the evening of February 25, 1915. Yes, he 
is gone, but to have met him was to honor him; to have 
been taught by him was a priceless privilege ; to have been 
intimately associated with him was a benediction; to have 
walked with him into the fields and woods and to have 
received from him a glorious view of the realm of which 
he was master was to have been led very close to the great 
throbbing heart whose pulsations will never cease in the 
breasts of those who sat at his feet until they too shall have 
passed into that "other room." 

Raymond J. Pool. 



144 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 



ACADEME 



What cities men have dreamed! 

And builded of hewn stone on plain and hill 
Till man's historic script is starred and seamed 

With images of grandeur that do fill 
Dim generations with reverberant awe 
Of kings and peoples and their cities law! 

Great Karnak which Tehutmes raised 

Of granite of Syene and red porphyry 

And Nubian gold — and o'er it blazed 

Tehutmes' name, the Conqueror! 

Babel of the East — rich Babel that did lie 

By the rivers of Paradise, Lord of peace and war . . . 

In her Orient mart 

The fairskinned northman met the swart 

And jewelled daughter of the south — 

Ah, honey was her mouth, 

And honeyed song was all her breath ! 

And honeyed was the tomb 

Wherein the siren city laid her sons at death . . . 

Karnak and Babel, and she who gave their doom 

To earth's wide nations — Rome, the eternal ! 

Who should withstay her all-imperious march . . . 

Today, the broken pillar and the ruined arch 

Proclaim her vanished sway. 

But we shall build more lastingly than they t 

For we shall seat in templed majesty, 

Fronting with gate serene the dawning day, 

What city deep-eyed Plato saw 

In visionry supernal — 

Justice her corner and all her law 

That wisdom which must be 

The guide and crown of mortal destiny. 

H. B. A. 



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